


You Made Me Human

by importantmetaphors



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (Big) Age Difference, AU, Ageless!Clarke, Angst, Descriptions/Mentions of Violence, F/M, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Modern AU (sort of), Romance, Smut, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:14:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21661060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/importantmetaphors/pseuds/importantmetaphors
Summary: '"I've been on this earth for over a century and a half. I've been on my own for the most of it. It's just the way things are," she states, like it's nothing, like she's breathed those three sentences countless times in the past - in the very, very distant past.'AU-Modern Setting where Clarke is ageless.Hiking with his sister on holidays has always been a thing for Bellamy to anticipate, but after a heated exchange of words and a trip gone awry, he ends up alone with a stranger that shakes his world up.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, background linctavia
Comments: 23
Kudos: 96





	You Made Me Human

**Author's Note:**

> Please, take a minute to read the tags and the warnings in note (2) before moving on to the story.
> 
> 1) The first draft for this was written years ago and I decided to give it a go again only recently. It's a piece of fiction that's very dear to me, so it had to come before any other idea that's sprung up since then.  
> First of all, I would like to wholeheartedly thank my then beta-reader, _rashaka_ , for the time she dedicated to this story, for being thorough and for giving me useful feedback. I probably wouldn't have felt comfortable publishing this without her advice and all the changes following said advice. I've changed and re-written many parts since then, so _mistakes of any kind are totally mine_.
> 
> 2) Like most people, I absolutely adore slow-burn Bellarke, but this is not really the case here. In this setting, their relationship is more dynamic and finding common ground is trickier, which is what makes it so interesting for me to explore. But it's also what makes it bittersweet at parts, so I would understand if it's not your cup of tea. Nevertheless, feedback is very appreciated, if you're feeling up for it!
> 
> 3) There are many reasons why Clarke's condition wouldn't really "work" in her favor for so many years but, since this is fiction, let's pretend it does.
> 
> 4) I've split the one-shot in four parts (I-IV) which could also be treated as different chapters, if you prefer. There is a playlist for each, consisting of mainly instrumental songs that were great inspiration for my writing and I could share if anyone is interested. There is also a **[photoset](https://important-metaphors.tumblr.com/post/189706646895/you-made-me-human-ive-been-on-this-earth-for)** to get you in the mood!
> 
> 5) I'm **"important-metaphors"** on Tumblr if you want to chat or if you have suggestions for Bellarke blogs to follow/fics to rec.
> 
> 6) Title comes from Richard Wells' instrumental song "You Made Me Human".
> 
> Enjoy!

**I.)**

**::**

He is tired.

Bellamy squints at the vanishing horizon, where the setting sun gracefully dove behind the mountain peaks just half an hour ago. He has roughly ten minutes before the darkness takes over, voraciously consuming his line of vision. He tightens the straps of his backpack and secures it on his shoulders as he picks up his slackened pace, neglecting the sting on his second to last toe or his empty stomach’s growl of protest.

What dominates his senses is the concern making his heart race and his palms sweat. The concern making him nearly forget to stop for a water break. When the sun finally goes, Bellamy exchanges his oversized water bottle for a flashlight, the click of the small button somewhat easing the stress line on his eyebrow.

He has to find her.

He repeats the phrase like a personal mantra in his head as he makes his way through the pine trees, promising to anything that’s ever been sacred to him to be lenient with her irascible, spontaneous decision to take off like she did. He only needs to hear her angered voice one more time, to see the anxiousness and the fear of being lost morph into deceitful stubbornness.

She _must_ be scared. He’d never, not in a million years, wish for this. But his feet can’t carry his weight for much longer and his voice is rough and hoarse from repeatedly calling out his sister’s name.

He releases an unsteady breath when he finally decides to acknowledge the sight of smoke illuminated by the full moon – it fades into the night sky somewhere near. He pushes on, his strides still hasty and purposeful.

The reality of someone lighting a fire crushes every last bit of his already broken hopes. The woods are cold in the night, colder than what Octavia has been used to back at Arkadia, their hometown. She was well equipped for their trip – they both were – but when she ran from _the same pointless argument_ , as she had called it, she made no move to grab her gear from the backseat of the car.

Bellamy spots the source of the smoke when he’s only some feet away from it. It’s a two-story cabin made of wood; the only trace of civilization he’s come across in hours. The eerie sounds around him feel smaller, less threatening as he approaches the entrance.

His knocks are anything but hesitant or quiet, yet no answer comes. Bellamy’s fist collides with the door again, harder, and the wood gives under the force, popping inward to allow him entry with a prolonged creak.

He clears his throat a couple of times, and steps in.

“Hello?”

When he receives only silence, he reiterates the word, loud and clear.

He frowns as he illuminates the place with his flashlight, moving deeper in the cabin. There’s a kitchen to his right and after a calculated pause, he goes for that room first. Walking around the large table in the middle, he drags the pads of his fingers over the rough, unsanded surface.

No dust.

The flickering flame from the lantern hanging over it captures his attention, despite the crackle of a bigger fire in the room. His nostrils fill with the smell of ash and warmth.

Before Bellamy can take in his surroundings for a moment longer, a knife wheezes past him. It lands near his boots with a menacing clack, startling the hell out of him. He swiftly turns his head towards the only direction it could have come from.

His mouth falls open when a girl with blonde hair pins him in place with her glare, lip curling in displeasure. A furry pelt hangs over her shoulders, and as Bellamy gapes, her hand moves underneath the back of her belt to retract another dagger.

And she looks so much younger than him, he would have laughed, if it weren’t for the hunger and the fatigue threatening to decimate him.

He lifts his hands in surrender, snorting when she barks orders at him, refusing to loosen up even when he eases his backpack off his shoulders and lets it fall on the floor. The timbre of her voice is rough and husky at the same time, like she hasn’t been using it for a while.

“You need to leave,” she tells him, making sure he catches a flash of her teeth.

“Hey,” he starts, attempting to walk forward, before a guttural sound of objection on her part makes him freeze on the spot. “I’m _not_ looking for trouble,” he reassures her, putting emphasis on the negation.

“I’m not looking for company,” she replies.

“I’m not here to stay. I’m looking for my sister – she’s about your age. I don’t have a picture with me, but she has average height, green eyes, straight dark hair reaching to her middle. She’s got a dark blue isothermal jacket…” He trails off, waiting for any sign of recognition. 

The girl shakes her head, knife still raised between them. Despite her defensive stance, her features are unexpectedly gentle when she admits, “I haven’t made her acquaintance.”

Something snaps inside of Bellamy at the way her index finger lingers on the pointy edge of her dagger. The anger gives way to a series of chills biting at the base of his spine. If he attacks her, even verbally, she might do something rash like back him up against the fireplace behind him, pointing her weapon, until his calves burn from the heat.

She seems crazy as it is.

“Is there, by any chance, a way for her to find shelter nearby?” Bellamy asks, despising the unwanted tremor in his voice. What he truly hates though is Octavia hiding all by herself in the dark, shivering from the cold.

“Not unless she walks two hours from here,” the stranger informs him, confirming the dreaded reality. She sizes him up and adds, “Not if she’s anything like you.”

He doesn’t take her bait, if that’s what she intended for it to be.

“Well, where is this shelter?” he demands, the wheels in his head already turning.

“East. It’s a small village. Nonexistent population.”

“How much will it cost me for you to show me the way?”

She doesn’t even take the time to ponder his offer, scrunching her nose at the thought instead. “It’s dark,” she points out. “It’s useless.”

“We’ll leave at first light,” Bellamy suggests. “If you really know these woods, I can pay you.”

She folds her arms over her chest, her brow furrowing. “No. You can’t stay here.” He opens his mouth, but she cuts him off. “I don’t need your money. I don’t need an intruder in my house.” She grunts the last phrase, resulting in a fair amount of doubt on Bellamy’s part. The girl in front of him can’t be much older than twenty.

Bellamy forces his train of thought back to the matter at hand. She beats him to it.

“If you were to hand over all of your belongings for tonight, _however_ ,” she begins, tempting him.

When she doesn’t finish her sentence, he takes the initiative to do it for her: “You’d let me stay for the night.”

“I’d let you know I sleep with a knife under my pillow and wake at the smallest of sounds,” she corrects, arching a fair eyebrow, daring him to flee.

“Fair enough,” he murmurs, giving his best non-threatening nod.

**::**

**::**

**::**

Bellamy is roused from an unusually deep sleep by the sound of vegetables being sliced on the chopping board. Panic sets in when the first object he chooses to focus on is the knife and the hand curled around its handle instead of his whereabouts. But his mind works quick, flashes of fresh memories making their appearance.

His hand fists around the fabric of the thick blanket, his muscles tensing. He can’t pinpoint the exact moment he thought pressing his eyes shut was a good idea or when he felt comfortable enough with doing so. All he remembers is worrying and then worrying some more, but the shrill whistling of the wind emptied his head bit by bit.

 _Octavia_ , he reminds himself now. Octavia, Octavia, Octavia.

He finds his backpack beside the divan he’s still curled in and he grabs it to him, his fingers fumbling with the zipper and disappearing inside.

“You won’t find anything useful in there,” a flat voice says. The girl’s voice. Bellamy looks up, meeting her cool gaze as she continues chopping, seemingly untroubled by his presence. It’s a far cry from yesterday’s attitude.

He notices the blue of her eyes for the first time. The light of the day, though dim, makes everything look a little less threatening.

He sits up a little straighter, clutching his belongings tighter to him, waiting for an explanation. After a long pause, she gives it to him.

“I took out your weapons.”

He shoots her an incredulous glance. _Weapons_? What weapons? He looks again; his pocketknife and his scissors are gone. He fights an exaggerated roll of his eyes and settles for a quiet sigh instead.

He makes a show of fishing for a granola bar – his last one – and unwraps it, his teeth noisily sinking into it. His mouth waters and his belly flutters in anticipation.

After the tip of his tongue darts out to lick the last crumb, he meets the girl’s eyes and is taken aback by a fleeting flicker of softness there. He’d gladly pretend it was his imagination, if not for the implication behind her next words.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

As she says it, she watches his legs dangle over the sofa until his socks touch the rug. “After all—” She pauses. “There’s not much you can do for now. The snowstorm will slow you down.”

Bellamy leaps from his seat in an instant, reaching the window in two long strides, tearing the curtain away and – 

_Fuck_. There’s white furiously descending from the low clouds, white around the edges of the windowpane, white entangled in the branches of the trees, white everywhere he looks.

“I’m making you something to eat,” she announces, hurriedly wiping her hands on the worn towel behind her.

“I can’t – no, I _can’t_ just stay here and keep my fingers crossed for Octavia to stay safe when she’s all alone out there,” he growls, his thumb pointing outside. His sister is freezing, starving, passed out for all he knows. This is the last place he should be in right now.

The girl-turned-hostess hardens her expression at his volume, and she slams her palm on the table. With finality, she tells him, “You can either stay here or you can follow her. This is the best I can offer. This is _a lot_.”

Bellamy knows he won’t make it in the blizzard. He won’t make it two fucking miles.

Later, when he forces actual food down his throat, taking all the energy he can get, he also forces his mind to come to terms with the fact that as of this morning, Octavia is as good as gone without him. Making frivolous decisions at this point won’t help his sister.

He stays.

**::**

**::**

**::**

In a way, the girl reminds him of some of his students; closed off yet determined. He doesn’t know anything about her, but he sees the spark in her, observes the sureness in the way she carries herself, marvels at the precision in her movements. Unraveling the passion and the life in a person, inspiring them, is his favorite part of being a history teacher.

At twenty-six, Bellamy may still be fairly inexperienced and unfamiliar with how to encourage teenagers out of their shells, but he makes it work somehow. He knows what makes them tick and what it requires to earn their prickly respect.

So, he makes small talk. He asks her about herself, about her family.

A scowl, deep and unfriendly, is all he gets for it.

She vanishes into thin air when he isn’t paying enough attention, only to step in front of him with an expression that dares him to defy her. She pushes a large book in his hands, loosening her hold only when his fingers have a firm grasp around it.

_Legacy of the Roman Empire_

Bellamy examines the cover, frowning a bit at the title. The teacher ID card she must have found along with his supplies and the two history notebooks have given her yet another advantage. Still, he manages a thankful twitch at the corner of his lips, something akin to a smile.

He takes a few moments to observe the small wooden constructions and handmade decorations hanging on the walls, dangling from the ceiling, spread all around the fireplace, some even painted in vivid colors. The are small plants in two corners of the cabin and Bellamy attributes some of the humidity sticking to his skin to them. 

Instead of letting curiosity get the better of him, he suppresses the urge to walk around the cabin and inspect the little details giving life to it.

He’s skimmed through nearly half of her book when the sound of rain alerts him, urging him to sit up a little straighter before he finally convinces himself to stand on his feet and take a look.

It’s pouring, but it isn’t _snowing_ anymore and that’s the greatest relief he’s had since his sister disappeared into the vast wildwood. He watches the frost and the whiteness melt into slippery mud for a moment, letting himself indulge in the comforting rhythm building outside the safety of his refuge.

“Here,” his hostess whispers, almost startling him. He turns around to face her fully, eventually noticing the clean, folded towel in her hands. “It’s going to get darker in less than an hour. You should take a shower. Tomorrow’s a big day for you.”

He accepts it, fighting a shudder when her cold hands brush against his. They are pale and small.

“Thank you.”

She bobs her head in acknowledgement. “I’ll start a fire.”

**::**

**::**

**::**

She wakes him at dawn, giving his arm a violent shake. She declares it’s time to get going and pulls her leather coat tight around her shoulders. Tens of questions pop into his mind, but Bellamy only voices one.

“Are you coming with?” he asks when he ducks to tie the shoelaces of his boots, making an extra effort to conceal the hope relieving the tightness in his chest already.

“I’m going hunting,” is her cryptic retort. She thinks this should be enough to sate his curiosity, that much is evident. More inquiries spring up.

But when she retrieves a bow and an arrow case that she straps to her chest, his mouth falls open.

She prompts him to hurry up, indifferent to his reaction. Bellamy presses his lips shut for a moment, before he asks for some explicit directions. Her answers are as vague as they were the night before.

“Do you have anything that could help? A map or something?”

“I haven’t needed one so far,” she admits. When the backpack is returned to him and the door is pressed shut behind them, she runs ahead.

Dogging her heels, Bellamy ponders his approach. “Could you – you could, maybe, show me. Show me the way.”

There is a pregnant pause, stretching between them as they walk. Just when he thinks she might be considering his suggestion, weighing the options he has given her, her gait halts. The heels of his boots sink in the sloppy soil before the possibility of colliding with her becomes real.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“You won’t have to travel all the way to the village, you—”

“I said no,” she snaps. “It’s a risk.”

“We’ll make a deal. If you don’t want money, then there must be something else for me to offer.” He drags out a heavy exhale, reminding himself that hesitance is not a luxury he can afford.

“Let’s make a deal. Anything you want,” Bellamy insists. 

“I’ve been fending for myself for years. What I need and what I want is nothing I can’t fulfill on my own. Frankly, it’s also none of your business,” she says.

“I can hunt,” he blurts out, blocking out her disbelieving snort as he keeps going. “My uncle taught me how to make snares up until I was a teenager. I’d practiced being quiet in the woods,” he informs her.

“I don’t _need_ snares,” she hisses, gritting her teeth.

“Just let me show you,” he implores. “I have to find my sister. _Please_.”

Silence envelops them, sending a pang of despair straight to his brain. She pulls her expression into a controlled scowl. It’s practically her signature by now.

With no warning, she shoves the sharp edge of her makeshift bow against his thorax, forcing him to step backward.

“You better not slow me down.”

**::**

**::**

**::**

Collecting food turns out to be easier than Bellamy anticipated. If the huntress notices his missteps, she doesn’t comment, choosing to let the soaked ground swallow the noise instead. Her footfalls are cautious, as expected, but also steady and confident.

The forest is full of unsuspecting animal life. The living creatures have apparently not been hunted enough, thus serving as an accessible meal.

The girl entraps a wild rabbit with nothing but her hands and Bellamy watches, utterly charmed, as rays of light get tangled in the locks of her hair. He towers over her when she crouches down, slipping the gloves from her hands one by one and stuffing them in her pocket.

Her fingers comb through the animal’s fur, soothing its small heartbeat, eliminating all traces of unrest within. A melodic hum echoes in the back of her throat when her left hand sneakily moves backwards, wrapping around the rabbit’s back feet, while her right one keeps massaging the back of its neck. She pulls.

The sun hides behind the thick grayish clouds the moment she drops the carcass in her bag, rising to her full height, breaking him from his stunned trance. It’s been years since he last felt at ease in the tranquility of the woods, and even longer since he had the chance to witness someone be so gentle and raw at the same time.

When an old sign indicates they’ve come near to the village, Bellamy lets her have the time she requires. She returns without her weapons, with her blonde hair tucked in the large hood she’s pulled over her head.

“What, are you a fugitive or something?” he jokes.

She remains sober, the line of her mouth unmoving, the muscles in the corners of her eyes unresponsive.

“My family isn’t appreciated here,” she confesses. Or so he thinks. 

They follow a different direction than the arrow of the sign – _Shallow Valley_ – points them to, treading instead along a narrow, miry path. She pushes back the low branches of a tree standing in her way, and Bellamy frowns when droplets of rain leap across the greenery to dot his forehead and nose.

By the time he’s dried them with the back of his hand, she leads him behind the peeling walls of a small building, then bangs on a piece of metal that looks like a back exit. She waits, impatiently tapping her foot on the ground. It makes mud splash on her trouser leg, but she ignores it.

The doorway reveals a man, surprised and wary. He is tall and broad, with his head shaven, his skin tanned, and his clothes covered by a white apron dirty with red and brown spots. His dark eyes take them in, widening when they land on her.

“Clarke,” he addresses her.

 _Clarke it is,_ Bellamy mouths.

“Something’s wrong,” the man she's speaking to assumes, his tone frantic.

Clarke shakes her head, denying it. “I’m here to trade,” she says, lifting her hunting bag a little, bringing it within eyesight. She tilts her head towards Bellamy. “And he’s looking for someone.” 

“My sister,” Bellamy jumps in, closing the distance between them as introductions are made. He accepts the man’s handshake, sharing every bit of tiny details his mind pushes him to. He’s halfway through the description of the clothing he last saw her in, when the man interrupts him.

“Octavia?” Lincoln guesses.

Bellamy catches his breath, and a grateful laugh rumbles in his chest. “Octavia,” he confirms eagerly.

“The hitchhiker,” Lincoln adds before Bellamy can blink. When he notices the perplexity on Bellamy’s features, he offers a better explanation: “My cousin found her on the side of the road. She’s stayed a couple of nights at her house. She was looking for her brother.”

“Can you take me there?” Bellamy asks.

“I’ll give them a call. Come sit at the front,” Lincoln proposes, gesturing beyond the door. Bellamy nods.

“I’ll be waiting here,” Clarke declares, reminding them of her presence. “If you have something for me.”

“I do,” Lincoln answers. “I’ll be right back.”

“No, you should come inside, too. Clean your cut, at least,” Bellamy advises, reaching for her hand to inspect the damage. “She hurt herself on our way here,” he murmurs, briefly meeting Lincoln’s doubtful gaze.

He feels her muscles spasm beneath her fingers as she fights to be set free. He doesn’t have the chance to register it. He uncovers the skin beneath her sleeve blandly, his thumb brushing against the pale skin in reassurance.

It’s soft.

He pauses, confused, pulling at her glove next. His frown deepens.

There’s nothing there.

Clarke uses his shock to her advantage, ripping her hand from his as though she’s been burned. She rubs at her wrist, concealing her exposed skin all over again.

When she follows them inside – a butcher’s shop, as it turns out – she makes effort not to look him in the eye.

**::**

**::**

**::**

When the little bell attached to the shop’s front door chimes, signaling their entrance, Octavia barrels across the remaining distance and into his open arms. 

She clings as if her life depends upon the warmth and the familiarity in his embrace. His palm dwarfs her ear and buries into the intricate braids her hair is woven into, shaking. He presses his lips on the crown of her head.

They speak in unison: “You’re okay,” and “I’m so sorry.”

They pull apart as ocean green eyes meet with hazel brown in elation and relief. His right hand tugs her left one until she squeezes back, their fingers painfully squished, their joints protesting.

“You’re okay,” he breathes again. He lets it echo twice more in his head and relishes in Octavia’s agreement.

“I’m okay, Bell.”

“Have you eaten?” he demands. He sweeps his eyes along the length of her shorter form, taking in the dark bags under her eyes.

“I’m fine,” she promises knowingly. “Anya offered a place for me to stay for as long as we’d been separated.”

At the mention of the third party, the room instantly feels more crowded. His gaze lands on the tall woman, Lincoln’s cousin, who escorted Octavia here, back to him.

“Thank you,” he says to her then. Anya accepts his gratification with a mild smile, updating him about what the previous day – the one he was trapped in a cabin in the damn woods – consisted of. They exchange some more words as Octavia ducks under the comfort of his one-armed hug, before the sound of the bell reaches their ears again. 

Once the customer has come and gone, Lincoln disposes of his latex gloves, approaching the Blakes with purpose. He asks Anya to take over for him for a few hours.

“I’ll drive you back to your car,” he offers them.

“Lincoln,” Octavia starts gently. “It’s alright. We don’t want to be an inconvenience,” she tells him.

“You’ve done more than enough already,” Bellamy is quick to add. 

“It’s no trouble, really. I’d be glad to take you,” Lincoln objects. 

“I’ll take them,” Clarke interferes, pinning the man with her long stare. “Anya has an evening shift at the diner; you know how it is on Fridays. Let her have her rest. I’m free today,” she reasons.

She exchanges a brief but noticeable glance with the man, and Bellamy pushes himself to read into the translation of it all. He remembers the pressure of her fingers on that sharp knife of hers and the cut on the inside of her palm that’s no longer there. Added, of course, to her illogical withdrawal when he considered treating her wound.

He remembers because he _has to_ – because the shrill ringing of alarm bells in his head hasn’t ceased since they met.

“I’m sure they’re pretty beat,” Lincoln assumes. “It’s a long walk through the woods.”

Clarke clenches her jaw at the small shake of the butcher’s head. She turns to each of the siblings then, wanting to know whether they’d mind covering the remaining distance on foot. Octavia’s answer is unsure and hesitant. Bellamy remembers the shallow pit in between the space of her brows and the momentary puff of air she released when he left her hut just this morning, the door shutting behind them.

Lincoln’s arguments appeal to Octavia’s weariness. His insistence appeals to the terrible feeling in Bellamy’s gut. It’s an unrest within his very being, warning him to be meticulous and vigilant, to decline Clarke’s suspiciously eager offer of help.

That is before Clarke’s nose scrunches up in protest and she wrests his attention back in a way he can’t ignore. Eyes on him, she pulls the damn _you owe me_ card.

Because he owes every single one of them, he folds.

**::**

**::**

**::**

Aside from the Blakes’ mutual apologies and hasty murmurs of reassurance, the walk back to their car is quiet. The sun peeks over the gloomy mass of the clouds once in a while, urging Bellamy to let the back of his hand hover over his forehead, shielding his eyes from the blinding light.

Clarke remains silent as well, leading the way, always keeping a safe distance between her and the reunited siblings. The arrow case finds its way back against the length of her spine and the pointy edge of her bow brushes the damp ground, carving a wet line in its wake.

Octavia arches both eyebrows when Clarke stops stealing glances over her shoulder altogether, pursing her lips in thought at the small warning shake of her brother’s head. She allows him to list every minute detail he’s memorized about the location of their mother’s beat up truck, taking comfort in the warmth of his hand rubbing on her bicep.

Bellamy is not an expert when it comes to orientation, especially not in these woods. He does, however, have an idea about the chill crawling up the nape of his neck an hour into their uncomfortable march. Had the years not molded him into who he is, he might’ve let the feeling of his hairs standing on end go.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks tentatively. They _could_ find their way from here.

“Positive,” Clarke retorts after a beat. “You should stay for lunch.”

“No, we shouldn’t. I promised I’d be out of your hair after you led me to the village. It’s the least I can do,” he reasons.

He feels Octavia’s hand on his shoulder. “Bell,” she whispers sheepishly. “I _am_ a little hungry.” It’s obvious she’s trying to control the tone of her voice, but if someone has the slightest chance to recognize the meaning behind her chosen words and practiced facial expressions, it’s him.

He meets her green eyes, round and imploring, and his mind drifts to a little girl two heads shorter than him with red ribbons in her raven hair, pale skin and prominent bones. His mind drifts to a different time, when Octavia was far from twenty and their mother was still very much with them, struggling to make ends meet without the disapproval of the home she rebelled against and was kicked out of.

It’s been years since he last saw those eyes.

He coughs a couple of times, expelling the emotion stuck on the back of his throat.

“Alright,” he agrees. He steps to the side, watching Clarke’s unreadable expression when she nods. “But only for lunch.”

“Lunch was the offer,” she confirms. Her feet speed up then, and she faces forward, unsurprised at the sound of their footfalls nearing behind her.

The rest of their walk is uneventful. Time flies and, before either of them knows it, the sight of the cabin emerges from the trees, encouraging them to slow their step.

Once inside, Bellamy slips his dirty shoes off right next to Clarke’s, discreetly motioning for Octavia to mimic his actions. His sister lingers everywhere, taking in every tiny detail in awe, feeling the texture of the wood with a small smile. At some point, he lets his mouth mirror hers as the weight of responsibility is gradually lifted.

He pads in front of the empty fireplace, grateful the cold of the hardwood floor doesn’t seep through his thick socks.

“On your knees,” a voice orders behind him. The information takes longer than usual to reach his brain, and even longer to send his limbs into action. He turns around carefully, well aware he’s having a hard time concealing the disbelief from his face.

Clarke is pointing an arrow at him. _A fucking arrow_ , he repeats in his head, trying to at least digest the biggest part of the situation at hand. Her face is hard when she commands him to kneel before her once more.

Octavia’s dazed expression morphs into panic as she demands to know what’s happening.

“Quiet,” Clarke dictates. “On your _knees_ ,” she says to Bellamy, speaking slowly, as if there’s the slightest possibility her words will sound more comprehensible and rational the third time around.

When he tries to negotiate, she cuts him off. He can’t tell the difference between her impatience and her restlessness and that terrifies the hell out of him. 

“No!” Octavia exclaims when he surrenders, raising his hands up in the air. “What – he hasn’t done anything wrong!” 

“Get down and I’ll let her live,” Clarke snarls. “I’ll let her go,” she adds, her voice evening out.

Cold fear grips at his heart painfully, squeezing his lungs until there’s nearly no oxygen left in them, because _no_ , she won’t. He doesn’t need to figure out how much of a liar she is to wrap his head around the fact that Octavia will have the same fate as him after his blood litters the floor.

He lowers himself on the ground anyway, persistently keeping his gaze trained on Clarke. She tightens her grip on her weapon, taking aim.

“You don’t need to do this,” he reminds her in the calmest tone he can master in the midst of his distress. “There’s nothing for me to gain by talking about what you’re so afraid of,” he swears.

“So I’ve been told before,” she answers. “I can’t trust you.”

He forces himself not to let his gaze stray from her, tracing Octavia’s movements out of the corner of his eye. His heart rate becomes quicker and quicker, his mouth turns dry and all that’s left for him to do is talk, distract Clarke the only way he knows best until the beginning of a plan forms in his head.

“Clarke,” he calls for the first time. There’s a barely discernible flinch on her part at the sound of her given name, like him storing anything about her in his mind is undesirable. “There are some lines you can’t uncross,” he continues.

She doesn’t even blink. 

“I know my limits,” she says. “I’ve learned more than you ever will.”

Her words are cruel and bleak, full of macabre promises.

The proof of their validity is even worse. She does a sharp one-eighty and her ready bow collides with the pan in the hands of his very prepared baby sister.

It all unravels before his eyes, fast and unrelenting. Octavia releases a frustrated grunt at the restraint of the archer’s weapon, a sound that gives way to a stubborn whimper when Clarke’s elbow connects with her ribs. She slips the utensil with effort out of Octavia’s tenacious grip, swinging once, twice.

The noise it elicits after a loud clang on his sister’s head shakes Bellamy violently out of his paralyzed stupor.

Livid when Octavia’s cheek is in full contact with the ground and her eyes are coerced shut, Bellamy leaps forward, looping both hands in the gap formed by the bow’s structure, pulling with rage and vigor.

The arrow clatters to the floor and he fights its owner for obtention and dominance. They crawl, furiously clawing at clothes and feet and free strands of hair, alternating between delaying the twisted competition and wrestling for being in the lead.

A splinter sinks in the sensitive flesh of Bellamy’s forefinger and he cusses his luck out. 

Still, he doesn’t rest until he has Clarke pinned beneath him, futilely trashing and kicking to break free from his smothering grasp. He closes his fist around the arrow, pressing its lean length against her collarbone. He teases the smooth skin of her throat, threatening to immerse the sharp tip in the area right next to her carotid artery.

They breathe heavily, chests heaving and lungs expanding as they avidly consume their shared air.

Clarke cranes her neck for him, facing away. “Do it,” she rasps, her eyes hard, staring into plain nothingness. An unsteady exhale passes through his lips, mingling with the blind fury springing from his pores. There is a fraction of a second he wants to hurt her, break her for rendering his sister unconscious.

Her senseless permission registers a second too late, but he finally manages to loosen his hold on the arrow without giving her the advantage she needs. Despite that, she makes no further move.

“First time’s always the worst,” she states.

He feels sick to his stomach. How many times has she done this before?

She gasps when he pushes himself off her, wiping invisible filth on his thighs in the process.

“Take her,” Clarke whispers after she props her weight on her elbows to sit up. “Go,” she eggs on.

Bellamy cups the back of Octavia’s head, framing her face as he checks for injuries in view. He wraps his arms around her flaccid form. He enfolds her.

“Go and never come back.”

**::**

**::**

**::**

The practical directions Lincoln gave him on how to find his way to the highway come in handy, springing to the forefront of his priorities. He intends nothing less than to carry Octavia all the way to the beat up truck.

She stirs awake at some point, when one of Bellamy’s deliberately cautious feet stumbles on a rock in his path. She latches onto him with a strangled attempt of an inhale, muffling her murmured thoughts in the fabric of his jacket.

He sets her on the ground, trusting her to find her balance, about twenty minutes before they reach the car. They each take their seats, lost in their thoughts. As he turns the car on, Bellamy breaks through the silence.

“You can sleep, if you want,” he soothes. He wants to – needs to – tell her how he’ll take it from here, protect her at all costs, never let anything happen to her again.

Octavia’s bright eyes fill with new tears, and he reaches over the console to rub his thumb on her forearm. 

“Can we go home?”

He looks at her some more, with his stomach tied up in knots. He lets out a long sigh, nodding. “Of course,” he reassures.

Bellamy makes tea when they get to their apartment – her favorite kind. She sits cross-legged on the couch as she balances a towel on her freshly washed hair, clutching the cup tightly between her hands. Its welcoming heat soaks through the wrinkled undersides of her palms, and he lets her pick out a movie.

The rest of their spring break passes in peace, with no huge fights taking place between them. No road trips gone wrong because of emotionally abusing ex-boyfriends and quick-tempered, overprotective big brothers.

In a few days, she's taking the bus to her morning classes, Bellamy is handing out new assignments and shared free time becomes infrequent.

Instead of being grateful for finding common ground when it was – is – greatly needed, all he can feel is guilt.

Guilt for putting Octavia through this, guilt for wishing for this kind of tranquility in their relationship in the first place.

Guilt for the desire, the one residing in the darkest corner of his mind, to be reminded of the very distinctive smell in the cabin in the woods and to get the answers he feels like he deserves.

Guilt, though, can only be buried for so long. Such desires must be buried for longer.

**::**

**::**

**::**

**II.)**

**::**

He’s doing the dishes when Octavia approaches him, a hesitance in her step which only confuses Bellamy. She’s never tentative around him, not unless –

“I was thinking…we should take a weekend off while we still have the chance. Since we cut our road trip short and all,” she declares.

Unless she has the purpose to _ask_ something from him, mulling her oh-so-bright idea over in her head, readying herself to verbally attack him from every angle possible until he warms up to her ridiculous persuasiveness and relents. Somewhat.

He wonders where she got _that_ from.

“Weekend’s always time off classes,” he responds.

She rolls her eyes. “I meant for real. Someplace quiet. Like that village for example,” she says hurriedly, her words blurring together to the point of becoming nearly inconceivable.

His hand stills under the running faucet. He drops the plate on the bottom of the sink, where it clings against the unwashed cutlery.

“What village?”

By the time the question’s left his mouth, the water has washed the soap dish off him. He turns it off.

Octavia juts her chin out. “Shallow Valley. It’s not far from here. And it’s nice. People there are nice,” she lists, as if the three fingers she holds out for him to see are reason enough.

“I’m not sure that’s a very good idea, O,” he counters. He speaks first and she swallows her _‘why not’_ s. “We’ve just gotten our schedules back on track. Besides, I have papers to grade,” he tells her. It’s a valid excuse, but it’s not like he can’t make do.

She sees right through him.

“Please, Bell,” she presses, pouting. “I really feel like a change of scenery. I’m tired of the same old crowd,” she complains. She touches his arm, stressing the need to get her way.

“Okay, fine,” Bellamy huffs and she simpers. He glares at her abrupt shift in demeanor. Her smile just pulls tighter at the corner of her lips.

“I’ll think about it,” he points out.

She smacks a wet kiss on his cheek and then she’s gone, just as fast as she appeared by his side, her hair trailing in dark waves behind her.

**::**

**::**

**::**

In the end, they compromise. They take off early in the morning of Saturday, agreeing to be back on the road at nightfall of the same day.

His sister makes all the necessary phone calls, arranging for them to meet up with the people Bellamy was not aware she was still in touch with. According to her content babbling, they’ve been invited to dine with Lincoln’s family.

Lincoln fills Octavia’s head with information about how to get there – hopefully _together_ this time – and she keeps pestering him about how he shouldn’t make the wrong turn and how he shouldn’t ruin the mood with his occasionally shitty choice of music.

She’s full of an infuriatingly contagious kind of energy, constantly moving and shifting on the passenger’s seat, sometimes even wearing his patience thin, but it’s the chirpiest he’s seen her in weeks, so he’ll take it over anything else.

He does the math after Lincoln has advised him where to park the car. The man strikes up conversation, and when Octavia cuts in, Bellamy tunes most of it out.

It’s a two-hour walk for him to get there and another two hours for him to come back. That is, if he hurries up.

Blowing out a defeated breath the moment he recognizes the need to actually make some progress about not controlling how and who Octavia interacts with, he half-heartedly decides to give her some privacy until some hours before dinner.

She makes a thoughtful grimace as soon as he announces his plans to get to know what Shallow Valley is all about. He promises to roam around for a while and she finally accepts it with a nod of her head.

At first, he does just that.

He wanders, pleasantly distracted by the unfamiliar smell of warm homes and Saturday mornings. A worn soccer ball rolls by his feet and he stops it with the sole of his shoe, a smile twisting the lines of his mouth at the loud yelps from a group of children to his left. The kids fight until one of them volunteers to get the ball. Bellamy uses a gentle place kick that meets the boy’s running legs halfway.

The little guy grins and thanks him, revealing a couple of missing teeth.

His good mood doesn’t sour until he reaches a familiar spot. He recognizes the back of the wooden sign with _‘Shallow Valley’_ carved on it.

He could do it. He shouldn’t.

His inhale is sharp and deep, determining. He makes the decision on a whim. (He _will_ do it.) 

He allows his intuition to guide him through the path that’s been walked by many before him, refusing to slow down when the bushes and the plants become a common occurrence. The details he’s managed to memorize from before, like the distinctive hollow at the base of that large tree, are a dreadful indication he’s picked the right path.

He finds his way from there.

Unlike the first time he encountered the cabin, once he proceeds to make his presence known he hears a noise from inside. The door doesn’t open wide, but it’s still ajar, and Clarke’s fierce eyes peek from beneath her lashes.

She doesn’t look stricken or astonished in the least, but recognition does bring the smallest of creases to her forehead. She only studies him from head to toe, before she opens her mouth. Instead of asking him about how he got here, like he expected, she sighs.

She turns her back on him, pushing the door open with her foot. She disappears inside without a word, leaving him no choice but to follow. Bellamy’s come too far by now to do otherwise.

He wills himself not to check on his newly acquired knife, knowing very well it’s something she won’t miss.

They sit by the kitchen table after a vague gesture of her hand, and he tries not to cringe when he considers whether she let him in because she thinks – knows – she has the upper hand, or because she’s figured out that harming her is far from his darkest thoughts.

“I want to help you,” he says.

“You want to help your greedy mind,” Clarke corrects. “You’ve been wondering about why your precious books have nothing to say about me. You think you’re entitled to know – you all do.”

“This isn’t about me,” is all he tells her in response, letting the truth of his words sink in, even if he’s pretty positive all his efforts will go in vain.

Clarke stares at him for a really long minute, tilting her head to the side as she examines him. “Why do you believe you could be of assistance, exactly?” she asks, doubt lacing the tone of her voice.

“Hurting people is not a prerogative or a right,” he admonishes. “Your freedom should end where another person’s begins.”

He hesitates. When he speaks again, his tone is lowered, as if he’s about to whisper.

“Especially taking a life. _Lives_.” He clears his throat and his voice retains the confidence he had managed to build. “It is not an actual solution. It’s not like everyone cares about you or why you’re here, either.”

“But you would still do it,” Clarke says.

“What?”

“You would take a life. For Octavia.”

She doesn’t wait to gauge his reaction. She doesn’t have to. Bellamy opens his mouth to correct her, but no words come out.

“You don’t understand. You probably never will.” She shakes her head. “After a while, living your life turns into just coping. Surviving. The ups and the downs start getting old and repetitive. People don’t ever change; they search for more, learn more, demand more. I won’t be the one to add fuel to their selfish needs.”

“But you’ll be the one to deprive them of any chance to be better,” he interjects.

“If it comes down to defending myself, yes, I will. I’ve met lots of men like you. Scientists, engineers, curious villagers. They all claimed they had good intentions. In the end, they feared me. They feared the possibility of letting me go without exploiting what they couldn’t explain.”

At some point during her speech, Clarke leans back in her chair, relaxing. If Bellamy is one of those people—which he tells himself he’s _not_ —he won’t get away from her a second time.

“I’ve been on this earth for over a century and a half. I’ve been on my own for the most of it. It’s just the way things are,” she states, like it’s nothing, like she has breathed those three sentences countless times in the past – in the very, very distant past.

It’s not nothing. It’s surreal and impossible for his brain to digest. But when the morning light leaks from the brightness of the sun and caresses her impeccable skin, no sign of immaturity and inexperience register. Those are the words of a wise woman and the fact that he believes them is almost unnerving.

He heard them and he felt them; he believes them.

She looks at Bellamy like she waits for his challenge, for the requirement that she needs to prove her assertion.

“Have you met anyone like you?” he asks, his curiosity finally getting the better of him.

“My grandmother,” she confesses. “She’s deceased.”

He nearly starts, surprised. He imagined she was, like, _immortal_. That she had forever at her beck and call.

“It’s not what you think,” Clarke adds. “A fi- an _accident_ happened,” she stresses after some thought. “She wasn’t supposed to be dead. But cell proliferation can only work so fast. It’s not some paranormal power.”

Bellamy scratches the back of his head absently, pushing himself to recall all the essential snippets of information he was taught in high school no less than a decade ago.

He comes up short.

“Cell proliferation?” he queries. “How does that work exactly? I thought it was a normal thing.”

“It is, when it’s controlled and it stops. It’s how wounds heal.” Bellamy remembers how she yanked her hand from his when he thought she was hurt. “Mine just heal faster.”

He looks at the wrinkle in the space between her brows and thinks about how it always disappears. He wonders if she’s ever seen a permanent wrinkle before or if she’s had a scar like the one above his upper lip.

“So your condition is…” He trails off.

“Probably a cause of a genetic mutation,” Clarke fills in. “Or maybe just a curse.” She shrugs.

Just when he thinks they’ve silently agreed upon some odd kind of truce, she becomes aggressive and distant all over again.

“What?” she demands, annoyed when he lets the quiet stretch between them.

“You’ve seen things,” he muses admirably, propping his chin on top of his fist as he observes her. “Cultural decline and prosperity. Breakthroughs. War. You’ve _lived_ history.”

So what if he’s doing an awful job at concealing his excitement?

Clarke’s eyes narrow dangerously. “Nothing I’d willingly relive,” she retorts.

She almost sounds resigned. He could swear it, if it wasn’t for the impatient tap of her fingertips on the table that tries to urge him to _let it go_. But the miniscule twinkle in her eye, unbeknownst to her, dares him not to.

The antithesis to her seemingly cynical point of view was what enamored him in the first place. It’s all of the _why’s_ and the _how’s_ he chose to study and teach what shaped the past and observe what’s still shaping the present.

Bellamy tries to put some of them into words.

“History is not just about the facts and the bloodshed and the humiliation of the human race, as you would probably call it. It’s the core of rebellions and the soul of civilizations. Big and small.” He pauses a little in his short monologue, content with having her eyes on him. “It’s true that all customs are based on the needs of the people to feel validated and sometimes excused for what they do, but it’s also what _unites_ them. What gives them purpose and drives them forward.”

He allows himself a breath. He can’t imagine someone who has five or even six times his years turning a blind eye to that, and certainly not thinking or hearing it for the first time.

She isn’t interested in being a part of something, he can understand that much. Then again, what would be _her_ purpose in this solitude? What would be enough to make her climb aboard life as the clock ticks in her favor?

“Those are nice thoughts to entertain,” Clarke remarks slowly. This must be her polite alternative for what she hears come out of his mouth; the romantic words of a naïve fool.

“For another time maybe,” she adds before he can argue with her.

It’s dismissive, the cue for him to go. A long moment passes.

“For another time,” he echoes, testing the waters. Perhaps it’s confirmation bias, but he thinks he notices part of her irritation ebb away. Still, this is no invitation.

That day, she lets Bellamy leave without having an arrow’s edge directed at his forehead, with the likely hope he won’t be back.

**::**

**::**

**::**

He comes back, before it's his students’ “ _food for thought”_ week.

He briefly explains about the two parts this consists of: a lesson reviewing the latest big chapter studied in class and a lesson reflecting on the societal impact of historical and political events.

The upcoming subject is “The Paradox of the Great War”.

Bellamy mentally toyed with ideas springing up on his way to the cabin and, by the time he reached it, he had roughly figured out the direction he wanted to guide the kids towards.

He doesn’t believe Clarke is an active listener when he talks about how, after World War I, innovation was tied to destruction because and despite of it. She stirs something in a pot while he goes on to list some of the most important points of technological and medical progress in the midst of chaos and she surprisingly throws her two cents here and there. Conversation flows until the smell of carrots and stew reaches his nose.

Although he tiptoes around the line between getting snippets of her opinion and not making things too personal for her, she avoids commenting on some of his remarks and she definitely snaps at him once or twice. To be fair, Bellamy still hasn’t forgotten about the knife in his boot and, on top of that, his wording is as awkward as he is unsure of how to broach the subject.

Little does he know, Clarke will later — soon — reveal her role as a healer, a participant in the treatments and training of disabled and discharged war soldiers. She will reminisce about her “still black-and-white, false impression” that people were labelled as _bad_ and _good_ and they will spend a good three quarters of an hour arguing about it, exhausting the terms. Bellamy won’t accept her adamant “the virtue of good will doesn’t exist for long” and she won’t budge, either.

For today, she distracts him by other statements and questions alike.

“I would have pegged you as a mythology teacher.”

“I hope you don’t have a secret part-time job as a journalist. I hate journalists.”

“How’s your sister doing?”

He scoffs, the mention of Octavia sending a hot, uneven breath in his lungs, even though he knows it’s to rile him up and send him out.

How _is_ Octavia doing? Still double-checking their lock and door latch before she goes to sleep. Still jumping when she hears a remotely unusual sound in the darkness. Still jolts awake from nightmares sometimes.

“She’s paying a little extra every month because she traded her yoga for self-defense classes,” Bellamy says pointedly instead, before he can overthink any further.

“Good choice,” she simply answers.

He glares at her and gets ready to say his goodbyes. This goes beyond his aspirations for Octavia to be a strong-willed, independent woman and he’ll be damned if he lets Clarke pretend otherwise.

She stops him with a call to wait before he gets to the door and places a small something secured in cloth in his palm.

“Seeds for Lincoln, if you stop by the village again. He will understand,” she explains. She doesn’t ask him if he will indeed pass by Shallow Valley or tell him she could just do it herself, as would be the reasonable thing for her to do. She also doesn’t unnecessarily invite him for lunch and for that he is grateful.

With brand new _food for thought_ , Bellamy accepts the small package as a metaphorical white flag.

**::**

**::**

**::**

He comes back again and again, week after week.

He is the student for a change, in this arrangement of theirs, and he enjoys it more than he wishes to let on. Sometimes it’s a trade of give and take, sometimes more and sometimes less.

He exchanges information like the shit that came with his mother’s terminal illness with parts of Clarke’s childhood — luxurious for the era she was brought up, but simpler than his nonetheless. The hazy memories is what she touches the most; the oldest, more innocent ones. Her best friend Wells, before he died of pneumonia. Her furry old cinnamon cat.

Then it’s chronologically mixed, happy pictures that she paints in his head, like playing Robin Hood with Niylah after getting her heart broken by a man, at the very end of the 19th century. Or like meeting Carlotta, Lincoln’s grandmother, in the ‘50s when she was still a child collecting wildflowers in the woods.

What Bellamy offers does not come nearly close to what he receives. But when he sits alone at night, scrawling quick notes of what stood out to him, ironically like a part-time journalist would do, the enthusiasm ignites in him and overshadows all else.

That is until the moments Clarke spaces out, when her stare is blank and dark clouds loom over her head. That’s when he knows to always leave her alone, that she’s having her doubts as much as he is.

Clarke eventually starts warming up to him, little by little, even welcomes him in her own, peculiar way. There is that smile — the one that’s hard to decipher just from glancing at the slight curve of her lips — she reserves for him, these complex, eloquent words with intricate meanings that mesmerize him, the talented fingers that have a history of healing wounds and causing them.

And there’s her point of view; dark and true and all too experienced, formed by all the different lives she’s lived. It _disarms_ him. The past is not a common concept in their minds, but it haunts her almost as much as it intrigues him.

**::**

**::**

**::**

When it gets warmer, Bellamy saves money for the little escapades to Shallow Valley that certainly weren’t part of his plans before and Octavia starts working at a cafeteria close to her campus. She insists they return to the village every other Saturday, when it’s not her shift, so they load their bicycles on their mother’s pickup truck and off they go. He finally starts enjoying their shared time by catching up with her instead of checking up on her.

On the days when he’s on his own, he takes a different turn from the one he and Octavia do together in their usual route and he finds himself halfway through the path to Clarke’s cabin.

She never looks like she's been waiting for someone. For him. She's never gone either, always interrupting a little something that she's doing upon greeting him. Some days he meets her with paint on the bridge of her nose and underneath her fingernails. Some other days he catches her with Chinese newspapers sprawled on her table, notebook with logograms and her neat calligraphy next to it.

The Saturday night it rains for the first time in quite a long time, it’s Octavia’s shift in the cafe and he doesn’t make it back home from the cabin in the woods. It’s the second heavy rainfall he’s encountered here since he first met Clarke and it’s the second time she lets him stay over. In fact, this time, she insists that he does.

He sleeps on the very same divan he did last time after some persuasion, only to be startled awake by the distant thunder.

He props some of his weight on his elbows, dizzy. The light of the lantern on the kitchen table flickers, drawing his attention to Clarke’s shadow, where she’s hunched over the table. Her back is turned on him, so Bellamy hoists himself up. The noise breaks her out of her reverie, but her sapphire eyes are clouded with gloom, hand still clutching her dagger.

Her breathing remains irregular even after he wordlessly coaxes the knife out of her painful grasp.

In moments like these, Bellamy yearns to be in her head, to see if the shape of him matches the shape of the demons in her nightmares. The demons she hasn’t chased yet.

He yearns to relieve her taut shoulders, and wonders if she considers harming him anymore.

He wonders if she considers uttering words with her inviting mouth, exhaling, hoping to inhale every last trace of his self-discipline. She would lure him right in and he would long to drag his fingers over the birthmark above her upper lip and —

Then she’d literally take his breath away.

He’s thought about it. His mind hasn’t had the time to grasp how much he really thought about it but he has. Oh, _he has_.

**::**

**::**

**::**

Morning comes and he knows he totally screwed up with Octavia when he gets ten unanswered calls and plenty of texts all at once. His message from the night before, the one saying he would stay at Miller's until noon, was never actually delivered to her.

So Octavia called not only Nathan Miller, Bellamy’s friend from childhood, but each one of their shared contacts.

Bellamy’s phone starts cooperating when he's on the road again, pushing on the pedals of his bike fast to get to his car and be on his way home even faster. He sends a quick text to his sister that “he's fine” and “he’ll be back soon” and ignores the instant _cling_ he hears in return.

There is not a lot of traffic on the road and the drive back is uneventful, but he still feels it takes too long. He tries to rehearse what he wants to say to Octavia, tries to figure out the golden mean between diverting her attention from the white lies he’s been telling and not hurting her. He changes his lines every ten minutes.

He ultimately forgets all of them. Octavia is already in the living room when he gets there, pacing. There is background noise coming from the television behind her and his gaze flickers to it momentarily. She picks up on it and presses ‘mute’.

“You _jerk_ ,” she starts, furious and clearly frustrated. Her knuckles collide with his shoulder and it’s neither soft nor playful. “Where the hell have you been? We were about to send a search party for you!”

“I’m -”

“ _Don’t_ you say you’re sorry,” she warns. “And don’t try to tell me you were at Miller’s or Murphy’s or Harper’s. I talked to all of them and they were worried about you already.”

Confused, he answers a beat later than he intended. His friends don’t really know how he’s doing as of lately and he recalls cancelling their plans twice in the past month, which admittedly might be somewhat unusual for him.

“I’m sorry, I _am_. I tried sending you a text, but there was no cell reception and-”

“No cell reception,” Octavia parrots. She blanches. She sits down on the armchair, mulling it over in her head. “You were in the woods. Overnight.”

 _How?_ is his first thought surfacing. The next is that there are many places where he doesn’t have reception, other than the woods, and the third is that his phone could have shut down due to low battery, but Octavia couldn’t have possibly known which one of the above was true. She doesn’t let him try to put two and two together for more than a few seconds.

“Lincoln saw our car a mile from Shallow Valley. Please, tell me the truth,” she requests, more quietly than before, the last part almost a question.

Bellamy’s first instinct is to fret about the fear and the anxiety his choices might have triggered. His second instinct is to think it through: Octavia is thick-skinned and headstrong, a little too much like him. They were brought up by the same mother.

 _Fear is a demon_ , Aurora Blake would say some nights instead of read them bed-time stories. So fear did become Octavia’s demon and she learned how to slay it at any cost.

“I was in the woods.” Bellamy’s confirmation is escorted by his sigh.

Octavia visibly swallows. “Did you — did you see her again?”

“Yes.”

“Did she…try anything?” He shakes his head. She searches for something in his face, but doesn't seem to find it. She hesitates. “You saw her willingly, right?”

“I did, O’. There’s nothing to worry about,” he says, reassuring.

“I do worry, though, Bell,” she quickly replies, throwing her hands in the air. She lets them fall limp against her sides, crosses them to her chest, re-adjusts them as if not knowing what to do with them. “It’s not safe,” she finally decides. “Lincoln said it’s not safe to be back in the woods.”

“ _Lincoln_ said that?” Bellamy exclaims, enraged. He should have been paying more attention, he realizes. He should have known or at least suspected Lincoln’s ties to Clarke, the ties the guy practically inherited from two generations ago, would come in the way of Octavia moving on with her _normal_ life, for fuck’s sake. Especially since Octavia and normal, healthy relationships are a bad match born from misplaced trust and impulse.

“Lincoln is my friend. He introduced me to his Aikido teacher and has been teaching me the basics. He’s been helping me through a lot, actually.”

“He’s using you, Octavia. Keeping you close to control the situation. It’s Clarke he’s trying to keep safe, not you,” he accuses.

“This is nothing like him! You haven’t even really talked to him,” she reminds him.

“I don’t need to talk to him to guess what his priorities are. Who do you think gave Clarke permission to take us back to _her_ place on _her_ terms? Who do you think he trusts more, a woman he’s known his entire life or someone he found alone on the side of the road? Do you really believe she would be the one get the short end of the stick?” he questions, eyes frantic, hair disheveled from having run his hands through it in his distress.

He finds Octavia strangely silent. When she finally speaks, she takes him by surprise. Testing him. She’s actually testing him.

“Just because he made a promise at his father’s deathbed to protect her like you did at Mom’s to look after me doesn’t mean he likes whatever comes with it.”

And if it’s anything like the promise he made to always bear the responsibility of Octavia’s fate, it surely dates way back to a much tender age point in Lincoln’s life.

“You know. About Clarke.” Bellamy examines her sudden calmness, his turn to test her.

“I do. Most of it anyway.”

“Look, O’ – I’ve been careful.” He sighs, pinching the top of his nose. “If you need – if you want – me to be done with this, say the word,” he urges, because free will is one thing, but nobody and nothing else comes first. (And she will always be his sister, his responsibility.) 

“I only need you to keep being careful. That’s the thing, Bell, we have to let each other make decisions. On our own. I can’t move forward with you constantly right above my head. We’ve been over this.”

And they have. So many times. But she looks so much like Aurora sometimes, who was wronged and humiliated by fainthearted men on a regular basis, deprived of all the good she deserved. He wants so much more for Octavia, wants her to live her life to the fullest.

“You’ll tell me if something goes wrong? Anything?” Octavia nods in affirmation. That of course still doesn't mean he has to trust _or_ like Lincoln.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she says in return, voice quavering. Bellamy’s chest constricts at the sound. “You’ve been playing with fire.”

And that’s exactly what Clarke is. A rampant flame, a ball of energy and fire. Fire threatening to wrap him in its beautifully destructive embrace.

It burns in his lungs. It’s closer than he’s ever felt it before.

**::**

**::**

**::**

Octavia’s second round of exams eventually come up, and they huddle in their apartment, each preparing for the forthcoming end of the school year. On the third day, she brings a friend Bellamy’s never met and shuts the door to her bedroom with no decent chance for introduction.

“That’s Monroe,” is all he gets.

He might dwell on her behavior, but Monroe is a girl other than Anya or Indra or anyone else related to Lincoln and she’s carrying colorful flashcards and two notebooks. Octavia hasn’t invited girls over since their mother was driven to the hospital and never returned. Lasting friendships wasn’t a thing for her in their hometown anyway, not like it has luckily been for him.

He lets them be. He gives up on the writing of his little historical booklet for today, the one he really started getting hyped up about only shortly after he met Clarke.

He dials Miller’s number and they arrange for the group to meet at _The Grounders,_ the local bar turned into their hangout when they were still in their early teens. The place is packed when he arrives, a mix of high-schoolers, young adults their age and the regulars in their late fifties.

Bellamy finds the group and shoulder claps ensue. Harper wraps him in a tight hug, giving him one of her brightest smiles yet. He’s missed a lot during the past few weeks, missed _them_.

“Looks like Bellamy Blake finally decided to grace us with his presence,” Miller greets. Murphy snickers and Harper snorts.

“You’re late,” Harper points out. Just as he’s cooking up some credible excuse for covering up what he was really doing, she laughs it off. “I’m joking! Come on now, we have a lot to catch up on.”

She gestures for the waiter to bring them drinks and meanwhile delves into the story of Jasper Jordan captaining a pirate ship in his sleep and having a full-blown conversation with people sat next to his bed, video recording. Harper is apparently dating Monty now, Jasper’s roommate from college, who’s smart and gorgeous and a nerd. Miller seconds the gorgeous part.

Emori convinced Murphy to start scuba diving with her, which is as close as Murphy is ever going to get to extreme sports.

Eric’s mother invited Miller to the Jacksons’ summerhouse for the first weekend of next month and he’s hilariously, absolutely terrified.

Bellamy’s chugging down his beer when Murphy nudges his elbow. “Three o’ clock. Your turn,” he tells Bellamy, laughter in his voice. Soon enough, Bellamy turns his head to the right and there is a tall brunette in the bar, making her order. She slightly turns towards their direction and Bellamy instantly recognizes her.

“Echo?” he says, sure he can’t be heard over the music. They were each other’s booty-call six summers ago and it worked great as far as he remembers. Until of course duty called and they had to break off their arrangement for the sake of moving on with their lives — he was trying to balance University classes with his job and taking care of Octavia back then, and couldn’t afford to load his schedule with much more.

“Back in town,” Murphy sing-songs. But Bellamy isn’t up for talking up girls tonight.

“You’re just trying to distract me because I beat your ass in pool last time and I’d gladly do it again. You’re scared shitless.”

Diverting Murphy’s attention works and they’re occupying a pool table in under five minutes. They play three games until Harper calls them for darts which he clearly sucks at but, should he say no, pestering will follow.

As they’re ordering more drinks, Bellamy chances a look towards the spot Echo was standing, only to find she vanished.

**::**

**::**

**::**

“Come to Arkadia with me,” Bellamy suggests the next time he watches Clarke’s pencil hover over blank paper.

There’s something interesting about being witness to her art. It goes against her practical nature, against her belief things such as sensibility and fear don’t apply to her anymore. It satisfies her deep, feral needs and unveils her most farfetched wishes. Paper is where the outlines of images in her head, vivid or abstract, come to life.

It’s personal, and reaches that part of him that can’t hold back.

The tip of her pencil draws a faint grayish line.

“You know I can’t,” she mumbles, pausing. Her head remains bowed.

“No one has to know. No one knows you. It’s a small town but people mind their business,” Bellamy reasons. “It’s only for a weekend.”

“A lot can happen in a weekend.”

“And I’ll be there for every part of it,” he says.

Her hand never stills, even though it’s quite apparent she hasn’t truly decided what to draw yet. It’s her excuse, her distraction.

“Clarke.” Her fingers wrap tighter around her pencil. “Look at me,” he dares. She obliges, her eyes hard and defiant. His lips part for a sharp intake of breath.

“Please come,” he asks.

“I shouldn’t want to.”

She shouldn’t. But there's the slightest possibility that she _does_ and that’s all it takes for warmth — yearning hope and then just sweet awareness — to spread inside him.

**::**

**::**

**::**

She follows him home on a free Friday.

Bellamy gives her a quick tour of the apartment. They pull out a single mattress from under his bed and he gets a fresh pair of sheets for her.

“You can sleep wherever you want. You can have this bed here or any room.” Except maybe Octavia’s, but Clarke must already know that.

He gives her a towel and reminds her where she can shower while he goes to prepare snacks for the day. He finds her in the living room next, right in front of his bookcase, hair still dry.

“Nothing to be jealous of, I can guarantee,” he says.

“Well, it will grow with time. Mine is more like a small library sixty years in the making.”

“More like a museum exhibition,” he corrects.

Bellamy recalls how positively shocked he was when she recently led him to her small paradise, the room hosting her canvas and equipment for painting as well as other objects that were either old and dear to her or under construction. But what truly stood out to him was the enormous bookcase that she had, occupying half the space.

In the shelves he was met with all kinds of books, written in three different languages and newspapers in six. There were notebooks about cooking, hunting, working out and medical recipes, all in her pretty, meticulous handwriting. There were drawings of faces and moments, sketches of her cottage and parts she wanted to add to it. And then there were also the boxes on the highest shelves that had more dust than the rest on them, surely memories she preferred to keep untouched.

“Is this your mother?” Clarke has now moved to a framed picture of what was then a family of three, a happy one. He was fourteen and Octavia eight.

“That's her, yes.”

Clarkes caresses the glass with her index finger. “You both look like her. Your sister more but you have her eyes. And her chin.” She looks around for some seconds, as if searching for something. “What about your father?”

“Mom never kept pictures of our fathers. They were out of the picture too soon so she loved us enough for both of them.”

Clarke nods. “I never had that with mine. After my father died, we lost each other, my mother and I. She never looked at me the same.”

Bellamy tries to fit the puzzle pieces together. Abigail Griffin was one of the best healers of her town at the time Clarke was nineteen. Jake Griffin died in the same train accident Clarke should have but didn't. Everyone called it a miracle, but Abigail was quick to make the fateful diagnosis, what with the history of her own mother.

“I'm home!” Octavia hollers suddenly, purposefully shutting the door with a loud bang. Clarke jumps and puts the picture down.

“It's fine,” Bellamy tells Clarke. “She knew what time we’d come.”

“You better not be pointing arrows or knives or any of that weird prehistoric shit at me. We don't normally do that here.”

Bellamy sighs, unsurprised. Octavia’s voice nears and so does she, leaning on the doorframe with her right hip. Crossing her arms to her chest. Smiling from ear to ear. Half of it seems to be good mood and the other half her enjoying herself, but she sure as hell doesn't look uncomfortable like he'd feared.

“Hi, Bell.” He sends her a warning look, but he lets her have this. It is, as a matter of fact, her home as much as it is his and Clarke has been well aware of the terms under which she agreed to come.

“Octavia,” Clarke greets. She almost looks like she might have something more to say. She hesitates a moment too long and Octavia takes charge.

“Oh, we've met. You know, that time when you tried to kill me.”

“I think that's enough now,” Bellamy urges.

“Fine. But please don't apologize, I really hate hearing it.”

“I want to,” Clarke insists. “If you would be ready to let me at any time.”

Octavia makes a dismissive, _whatever_ gesture, then addresses Clarke again. “I'm going to my room. If there’s stuff Bellamy can’t help you with, knock.” She makes a fist and pretends to knock. Clarke mutters her ‘thanks’.

When it’s late afternoon, Bellamy leaves Clarke alone to take a ten-minute shower of his own. After he’s dressed, combed his hair and brushed his teeth, she is nowhere to be found. A strange feeling settles in his gut. He approaches Octavia’s room, where he can hear commotion from inside.

“Octavia?” he calls.

“We’ll be right out!” she calls back. He walks back to her door when he hears them exit, some minutes later, trying not to look hasty and welcome yet another elephant in the room.

Clarke emerges with hair tamed in smooth ringlets, clad in a casual long-sleeved lilac dress that compliments her legs pretty damn well. Her eyes seem strategically wider, her lips just a shade darker. He gapes.

“All set,” Octavia announces. It might be his idea, but he feels a shift in the atmosphere between them. He checks his watch and asks Clarke if she’s ready to go.

He takes her to the movies, as promised, and, at some point, her hand ceases fiddling with the fabric of her dress.

After, she expresses her agreements and disagreements for modern cinematography, noting how things have changed since she’d last been to a cinema, nose wrinkling when he defends some of it.

A car passes by, fast and noisy, and she grabs onto his elbow, alarmed.

“Not too many cars in Shallow Valley?” Bellamy says, mirth in his voice.

“I forget myself. I don’t wander around much there.”

Her hand slips down his forearm and he catches it in his, watching the redness of embarrassment slowly vanish from her face.

“Did Octavia..?”

“She told me she’s studying Economics and was _dying_ to finish up. To get a better job.” Bellamy huffs. “It’s alright. She didn’t accept my apologies and she made this little speech about me hurting you and her breaking my neck until it fixes itself back together. I think she believes I’m some kind of vampire.”

“Of course she would.”

He gives her hand a small squeeze and doesn’t let go for the rest of the evening.

**::**

**::**

**::**

Clarke keeps the mattress and sleeps in his room.

At breakfast, she picks the seat right next to his and tries not to wolf her share of the pancakes down. Her plate is empty before either of them has the chance to realize it.

(Her first bite is his favorite, always. There’s this humming of contentment tickling the back of her throat before the sound can reach her ears, and she quiets down. For a mere sound, it does strange things to him.)

“Thank you,” she mutters, sucking the last of marmalade from her thumb. Her lips don’t curve up, but her eyes twinkle in gratification and something more, something _better_ , and suddenly Bellamy’s a goner.

His voice is low when he speaks. “It’s been a long time since I wasn’t sure how to do this.”

“Do what?” Clarke husks.

Her pinky is only inches from his on the dining table. Bellamy aches to close the distance, touch her. His everything burns for it.

He can’t really tell if her growing proximity is purposeful or if she feels the same pull he does. What he can tell is that she’s in his space – everywhere.

“Talk to me,” he suggests, swallowing. “Tell me what you’re not okay with.” 

All he needs is the small nod of her head and the fleeting glance to his mouth. All he gets is just that. 

She accepts him, welcomes him, tilting her head ever so slightly as his lips ghost over hers. It’s not long before he identifies the flavor of his pancakes and strawberry jam, and his hand moves towards the side of her face to get a hold of her.

He takes her upper lip in his mouth, massaging, gently teasing the seam of her lips when she nips. There’s a short, quiet sigh from her after he’s granted entrance, like coming up for air is a little unnecessary. Like, maybe, she’s thought about this, too.

The front door slams shut just as her fist latches onto the back of his head and they’re forced apart, the spell violently broken.

Octavia drops the bags from the supermarket on the kitchen counter, making a point of ignoring their physical closeness and the swell of their mouths, sorting out the groceries in silence. 

“Did you get—”

“Balsamic vinegar, yes. I got it.” She rolls her eyes. “And I got something for Clarke.” She draws a shampoo bottle from her linen shopping bag.

Clarke’s hold tightens on the edge of the chair. “Thank you.”

Octavia stares at her, impatient. “Clarke’s afraid of the bathtub,” she blurts out when nothing happens. Bellamy tries not to make a face, uncertain of how to process this brand new, genuinely odd information.

“I’m _not_ ,” Clarke growls. “I just don’t like bathtubs.” And she’s right, if the lack of one at her place in the woods is any indication. Unlike them, she has a shower pan.

“So pray tell me, how would you have us offer you a way to shower?”

“If - if you have an extra hose or -”

“ _What_.” Octavia looks to Bellamy for assistance, then decides differently. “You know what, I don't get it. It’s not my place to be the asshole.”

Before he has the time to react, Octavia is gathering her keys. She scurries to her room to fetch her books and Clarke seems to be grateful for not being scrutinized anymore, gaze straying.

“I’ll be at Monroe’s for the day. Have fun,” Octavia deadpans and she’s out as soon as she breezed in.

**::**

**::**

**::**

“I have an idea,” Bellamy declares before he can second guess it.

Clarke stops mid-braid, eyes moving from her reflection to him through his room’s mirror, troubled. “I want to fill the bathtub for you. But I won’t do it without your permission of course. I — _this —_ could help.” Clarke resumes her hair-braiding until she gets to the ends, having no other option but to tie them.

“I don’t think it’s a good one.” She turns to take a proper look at him.

“I’ll be there for as long as you need. No peeking. I can talk you through it.” Clarke’s hands find something to stay busy with again; a loose thread from the pocket of her pants. “It’s what I used to do with Octavia when she was younger, whenever she was anxious about something. We would sit together inside her wardrobe, lie under her bed, talk about the monsters that didn’t exist and the monsters that she saw every day going to school. It worked, every time,” he promises.

Clarke slowly digests the words, considering them.

“I can stop at any point,” she says, placing emphasis on the ‘any’.

“You can choose what to talk about, too.”

“And if I tell you to leave…”

“I’ll leave.”

She nods. He fills the bathtub two palms below the brim and tests the water. Meanwhile, he speaks to her, tells her about his plans for their day. He changes the subject as smoothly as possible and asks her to list where she’d like to travel outside of the States.

“I-I was constantly on the go in the early 1900’s but I only ever travelled with books since then. I -” Her chest heaves, mind changing. “I want to talk about Lexa,” she suggests abruptly.

Bellamy follows along, half-startled. “When did you meet Lexa?”

“1933. She was the eldest in a big family — she had eight mouths to feed, six siblings and an unemployed father. I thought she was the love of my life then, put so much trust in her, felt for her. I tried to assist in any way that I could.” Bellamy strides across the bathroom, turning off the faucet. “It all backfired in the end,” she chokes out, pausing.

“The bath is ready when you are. Unless you only want a shower.”

“No. It should be like this.”

Her gaze turns glassy. Bellamy inhales deeply, quieting her ragged breathing with a question. “Do you trust me?”

He hates how she stiffens and her brow furrows as she considers it, hates the seconds ticking away, hates the somberness accompanying the ominous wait.

Clarke’s mouth opens and closes in indecision. “I don’t – I don’t know,” is what she settles for in the end.

“I’ll be over there.” He points to the closed lid of the toilet. “Listening. All you have to do is get in the water.”

 _I want to help you_ , his mind fills in. It remains unspoken, but she knows it and, for the first time since he’s said it or simply thought it, she seems to believe it. Him. “Can you come inside with me?” Clarke requests after a long beat, voice unwillingly cracking.

Hope rises in him. “Of course,” he agrees. He repeats exactly where he’ll be, suddenly pausing mid-sentence. He takes one good look at her, pupils dilated.

Inside, she said. _Inside_ , she meant. Well, fuck.

He swears his mouth’s never felt drier before. Clarke gently presses her lips together, expectant.

“Should I go first?” he asks. At her affirmation, he takes some steps back, hands slipping under the hem of his shirt when she steps into the room, following closely behind him. He pulls the garment over his head, letting it pool at his feet, which he bares next. He steps inside with his shorts.

He doesn’t watch her undress. He squeezes shower gel on the sponge, pushes his knees apart and draws his legs as close to him as they can get, making room for her to sit.

Clarke nestles in the space between his legs, flicking the lid of Octavia’s shampoo open so as to wash her hair. He reaches out, placing a palm over the spot in-between her shoulder blades.

“Tell me if something bothers you.” She stills the instant his hand crawls up the nape of her neck, massaging just behind her ear. He sprays her hair with the shower head until it's utterly soaked and rubs at its roots with precision, gradually moving to her scalp.

Clarke's all tense muscles and dubious thoughts, fearful and withdrawn. He has a feeling nudity is in no way connected with it. She gets on with her story.

“Lexa was trying to earn money in many ways, whatever she could get.” Just when he's afraid she's stopped speaking to him altogether, she continues. “One of the people she collaborated with was the head of a laboratory working on human genetics. Doing experiments on sick and crippled people. Willing people, as they’d claimed.”

Bellamy’s thumb presses on one of her shoulders in encouragement, moving in circles. His heart starts hammering at the direction this is going. She sighs in return, supporting her weight by placing an arm on his knee.

“I was anything but normal, but all I felt next to Lexa was wanted and young. So as luck would have it, I never suspected anything. I never noticed I was being prepared to be delivered to the mouth of the wolf, like an obedient little lamb.”

She cups water in her hands, rinsing her hair. Bellamy contemplates reaching for the showerhead, though, he eventually decides to let her guide him.

“Lexa sold you out,” he guesses.

“That was her intention at first, but she changed her mind. Taught me how to fight. Fool fell in love with me, too.” She laughs and it sounds strange, hollow. “She warned me to go at the last minute, told me what she’d done. It was too late. They barged into my house, anesthetized me and carried me to their lab for Lord knows how many days. I hadn’t seen the daylight for too many of them.”

She brings his fingers to the top of her collarbones. The heel of his palm presses against the slope of her chest, forcing him to fight a shudder. He presses his eyes shut and tries to focus on her breathing and coordinate it with his.

“They pierced my skin too many times. Cut me. Put wires atop my head. Gave me drugs I was dysfunctional without.”

Bellamy disentangles their fingers then, draping her hair over one shoulder. Her exposed back glistens with remnants of soap, and he almost bends down to feel them on his lips. Even though she probably doesn’t need it by now, he has an urge to tell her how terribly _sorry_ he is, trace it with his fingertips on her bare skin, remind her that it’s over.

This is, without a doubt, the biggest monster he’s had to fight yet.

“On my last day in hell, they put me in a tank full of water, like a big bathtub, and a man came in with me. They were constantly trying to push, understand what my limits for staying alive were. So they tried to drown me. The man was forcing me underwater, with no way to breathe. But somehow, the drugs that were supposed to make me slow didn’t work and I bought myself time. I fought my way out, killed five people.”

Bellamy feels the anger ferment chaos in him. Pressure builds up in his eyes, threatening to transform into wetness but he furiously pushes it away, managing to mollify his fury.

She’s trying to recreate the conditions of her attempted murder in a way, take control — he can see that now.

“All I could think about was that I had to live.”

“I’m so glad you did,” Bellamy whispers behind her ear.

“I haven’t been in a tub ever since.” She leans back against him completely, craning her neck to look up at him. “Could you touch my throat?” she requests. “If it’s not too much. I’m sorry if this is a lot.”

He shushes her softly. His left thumb hovers over her skin like she asked, barely touching. The rest of his fingers come around her throat in a caress of their own. Her panic lasts only a moment. She tells him to wait and he does. She takes her time to lean into the half-moon shape of his palm, then delicately pushes it away.

“Thank you.”

On impulse, Bellamy presses his lips against the junction of her shoulders, cheek resting on the back of her head until their heartbeats synchronize.

He washes her skin with the sponge, passing it to her only when necessary. Clarke astounds him by bringing his hands back to it, then to her chest.

She turns momentarily, until they are face to face, teeth discreetly sunk in the tender flesh of her bottom lip.

"That's okay," she says.

Bellamy's blood burns, gushes, travels south. There's a humming inside him, begging to be acknowledged. Beads of perspiration form beneath the messy curls at his forehead.

His fingers hook and flex on the expanse of each breast, his teeth grazing the side of her neck as she pushes back against him. His back bends and hers arches, eliciting vainly suppressed sounds.

The energy running through his veins makes him hot all over, coaxing an unintentional thrust out of him. The tub is only a couple of spontaneous moves away from overflowing, Clarke insistently covers his palm with her own and he stifles his apology with a low grunt.

His other arm encircles her, hand splayed over the softness of her stomach. He pecks her cheekbone.

Sensing her opportunity for slowing down, she drags his hand lower, stopping at the apex of her thighs.

“Do you want me to touch you?”

Her legs part in answer and she tucks the fronts of her bare calves under the backs of his.

“Yes,” she gasps.

He traces circles around her warmth when she leans back against him, his carefulness a warning, applying pressure when her hand curls in a loose fist on the fabric of his shorts. He inserts a single digit inside her, reveling in the way she sags on top of him.

He wonders when the last time she let someone put their hands on her like this was. Determination bursts from his pores.

A gravelly sigh and a bated breath later, he buries a second, a third finger in her. He pumps them deep and slow, crooking them as the base of his palm presses on her clit and she buckles against him.

Water splashes on her and her eyes flutter, dazed.

Bellamy reaches under her knee, propping her left leg on his, spreading her wider. There’s stirring in his pants; his body’s patience and control is wearing thin because _yes_ , it’s definitely been a while for him, but he’s kept his cool for long enough, so that’s something at least.

“Better?” he rasps.

She hums her confirmation. Better.

There are many things he’s yet to learn about her, but, for now, he compromises with silent words and golden hair plastered on his sternum. His fingertips dance on the soft curves underneath as she succumbs to him with a call of his name. (It’s the first time she’s said his name like this.)

After, he runs his knuckles over the outline of her ribs until her breathing evens out. It seems like no matter how many times he tries to think of something too big for her to defeat, he comes up short.

**::**

**::**

**::**

Bellamy has changed into a dry pair of underwear when Clarke walks into his room on the tips of her toes, towel wound tight around her.

“The floor’s cold,” she defends. 

His breath hitches at the direction of her gaze, because he’s still so fucking hard and he can’t – he just can’t.

“I left you clothes on top of the dresser,” he reminds her.

Clarke takes a seat on the edge of his bed, hands folded in her lap. “Won’t you come here?”

“Maybe this isn’t the best idea right now,” he declines. “But you can get dressed and I’ll be right out. Just—” He moistens his lips. “Give me some minutes.”

“I can help with that,” says Clarke, confidence escorting her words into that last part of his mind that actually seems to function.

He snorts. “I’ve got it covered.” 

Clarke stares, unmoving. He considers reaching behind him, latching onto the chest of drawers for leverage.

“Come,” she asks, and it’s closer to an order than a proposition.

She pushes backwards, inching towards the pillows. The friction relaxes the towel around her torso, making it hang lower on the tops of her breasts. She makes no move to fix it.

Bellamy walks around the bed, undecidedly kneeling on the mattress, beside her. Her hand, pale in contrast to his tan skin, drives him on his back and the towel rides up higher on her thighs as she straddles him.

She grinds and he curses, already aware he won’t last two minutes, should her hands land on bare skin.

He catches her wrists, forcing eye contact.

“Tell me,” he compels.

She looks perplexed for a moment. “It’s okay.”

He raises his leg from under her grip, messing with her equilibrium, flipping them over.

“No.” He hovers over her, leaning in. “Tell me what you want,” he clarifies. She opens her mouth to object, but he cuts her off. “It’ll make me feel good,” he swears in an attempt at eradicating her disbelief.

She demurs only for a second. “I want to kiss you,” she declares.

It’s simple, so simple, and that does nothing to stop every fiber of his being from resonating with this all too familiar overwhelming craving for her.

He cradles her cheeks as their lips meet, tongues grazing and wrestling, mouths savoring. It’s fast and messy all of sudden, like his capability of moving is accelerated. Clarke’s hands dip in the hollows of his back, palms fondling his shoulder blades, nails scraping at his waist, greedily squeezing, feeling.

She cups him through his boxers, his surprise rumbling in her mouth. He breathes heavily, coerced into a state of inertia. She looks at him through hooded eyes, the storm in them igniting his bones, sending his limbs into action.

He digs his fingers in her makeshift article of clothing. “Okay?”

To her credit, she glares. She unties the towel with a flick of her wrist, her middle rising over the mattress before she unfolds it. Her legs twine around him, caging him in and pulling him forward whilst his lips locate hers.

They chase the redness and the heat, from her cheeks to the valley of her breasts; mouth hot on her nipples, front teeth scraping on the pebbled peaks. She yanks at his hair.

A shiver invades him, running down the length of his spine, ending where the heel of her foot jabs into the dimple on his lower back. Her toes toy with the waistband of his underwear, fastening on both of his hips, tugging.

He lifts his gaze. Clarke holds it. The blood roars in his ears.

“I want to feel you,” she tells him.

Bellamy kisses her full on the mouth, quivering. The plain idea of being so intertwined with another person has never sparked such a strong reaction within him as this.

"How?" he murmurs against her jaw. He touches her where she wants him the most, his fingers slick and precise in her demanding wetness, getting a rise out of her.

Her chest heaves, like she's an exhale away from crying out.

"Inside me," Clarke says, voice catching in the back of her throat.

Her feet work then, and he shifts his weight from elbow to elbow before he lifts his knees to slip the last barrier off him.

She stares at him when he fumbles for a condom in the second drawer of his nightstand and stares at him for long after that. It's empowering in the least.

She's tight and warm and pleasant when he enters her — maybe a little too pleasant around him — and his head battles with him that he has to take a moment. Because even though this is so far from his first time, it sure feels like his first _something_.

Anticipation builds in him while Clarke adjusts to the shift. It’s what he knows, all he’s felt these past few days, but, with the unforeseen rotation of her hips, the anticipation is led by euphoria.

“Good?” she demands, her barely contained cunning smile betraying her.

The reply hangs on the tip of his tongue, dying out with a groan. His hips jerk forward, a hand cups the space above where they’re joined and her head falls back on the pillows, her wet hair like a halo around her. He sucks flushed skin in his mouth, his abdominal muscles contracting above hers.

She moves her leg just the right way and he burrows deeper, thrusting, her walls clenching around him until his world spins and spins and —

He’s so fucking close it’s predictable. 

His tongue swivels around a fading bite mark, soothing the spot, when her hands hungrily grasp onto his backside, spurring him forward. He slams into her and she rakes her nails through his hair, moving ardently against him, until they are both coated in a thin sheen of sweat, breathing heavily, tasting salt.

Let go, his every inch begs of him. _Let go_ , he hears somewhere in the background and he can’t really tell if it’s all up in his head because — _Clarke_.

Everything throbs, his forearms wobble to keep the weight off her and he can swear the earth stutters on its axis.

Bellamy blinks, dizzy, feeling her moan and her sigh quaver against the pulse point on his neck and evanesce. After, they are lax, boneless.

He strokes her forehead, combing her hair back. “Good?” he asks, his tone light and facetious.

She laughs, and it’s loud and rich and so very real.

**::**

**::**

**::**

He suggests they order pizza from Octavia’s favorite Italian restaurant, but Clarke insists they bake one from scratch for dinner instead.

“I'd promised to Carlotta I would personally make sure a recipe like hers would live on through the centuries. And thrive.” Clarke grins. “At least that was before Lincoln’s talent came into play.”

“Lincoln has a talent in pizza baking?” Bellamy asks, incredulous. Because of-fucking-course Octavia had to befriend a guy who’s half Italian and knows how to make his own traditional Italian food. Reason to keep her away from harm never stood a chance against his sister’s pizza-driven gluttony.

Clarke gives him an eye roll but there is mirth in her voice. “I’ll show you.” Right.

The phone rings and he goes to get it.

“Octavia will be back tomorrow,” he informs Clarke as soon as he hangs up, maybe a little more eager than necessary.

They do cook initially. They start kneading the dough together and they eventually mold it into the desirable shape, Clarke's hands guiding his. But soon enough he’s distracted, the smell of flour getting mixed up with the smell of _Clarke_ as tiny beads of perspiration roll down from her forehead.

She must be, too, because she’s on her knees from one moment to the next, mouth hot and fast and merciless, fingers latching skillfully on the inside of his thighs, nails digging in.

Before the marks disappear from his flesh and he can come undone, he gets her up on her two feet and seals her lips in a different way, a wanton kiss that has her inching closer and releasing an intoxicating moan into his mouth.

He takes her on the table full of flour and on the kitchen counter.

He catches her when she chases her way to her peak and his mouth invites hers to open up for a languid kiss. He takes a good look at her, heart soaring at her state of disarray.

“I’ve got you,” he says, relishing in her blossoming smile, soft. And he does. Right now, that’s all he knows.

They lie on the thick rug of his living room, going through what’s left of his family, what he remembers of his grandparents, of raising his sister, of this house. He tells her about his writing, about the history books he aspires to publish one day, and the setting sun paints red and orange stripes across the walls.

They end up ordering and the dough, forgotten, ends up in the freezer, for another time.

**::**

**::**

**::**

He catches himself wishing things could be different for Clarke’s trip.

Had the circumstances been ideal, he would have taken her to Aurora’s favorite live-music jazz bar and bought her his favorite cocktail. He would have brought her to _The Grounders_ , introduced her to the people in his life and she would have charmed their pants right off. Harper would have invited her to trivia night she hosts at her place every other Sunday and their team would have totally kicked ass. Miller would have switched to the familiar swing radio station and he would have danced with her, instead of Bellamy stepping awkwardly around her in the small space of his living room, nearly stepping on her feet. She would have kept up with Murphy’s good-natured banter, would have kept him on his toes with her wit and he would have been the one to invite her again first.

But he does understand Clarke’s apprehension and he himself can imagine the horrendous turn the situation could have taken and transformed into one of the most stressful long weekends he had ever encountered. None of his friends is gullible enough to not spot the loose threads of an incomplete, made-up story Clarke would most definitely need.

He chastises himself for his wish and his ungratefulness all the same, for Clarke met him halfway in a route he’s never stepped foot on before.

Circumstances _are_ ideal, and just like everything else, in a way that’s charmingly foreign, out of the ordinary. A way he welcomes.

::

::

::

Too soon, Clarke goes back.

He intends to see her, to be with her again, but instead what happens is this: he catches the flu on Tuesday. In May. Thanks to that, he doesn’t see her for a week.

Work is taxing, draining every last bit of his remaining energy, rendering him a grumbling mess. He sways on his feet.

(It doesn’t help that Clarke’s not there and that he has absolutely no way of speaking with her. God forbid she installs a phone and he listens to her voice for a minute or two.)

Octavia practically babies him, inducing him to sit on his ass as she takes complete charge of their weekly divided chores, having none of his protesting. She even makes him chicken noodle soup with extra noodles, just like he did for her whenever she was unwell.

He’s nursed back to health after what seems like eons, but eventually he’s on the go once again. If he’s learned anything from mending the holes Aurora Blake’s illness left in the lives they’re still rebuilding, it’s how to plan.

So Bellamy plans. He thinks about how summer is around the corner, about how he intends to spend it, about how he needs a new part-time job for that.

Octavia sits beside him on the loveseat one night.

“I talked to Lincoln.”

She does that now. Bellamy has mixed thoughts about him still, with the scale leaning toward the not-trusting-him side. It doesn’t help that she doesn’t ever mention anything about him, either.

“Clarke gave him a note for you. He said it’s important.”

“What?” Every part of him, except for his slack jaw, is rigid.

Octavia’s look is gentle, like she’s worried about him again, like she suspects more than he does already. She hands a folded piece of paper to him and his expression turns grim.

“Is that all?” he croaks.

“I’ll leave you to it.” So she does, and Bellamy’s unfolding the small note at once. He reads it quickly at first and the words blur together, inconceivable. He reads the two sentences a second and a third time and yet he can’t fathom the meaning behind them.

_I think it’s best we didn’t meet anymore. I wish you all the best._

_Clarke_

“That can’t be all,” he mutters to himself. He isn’t an ignorant person. He isn’t the type to be in denial or allow his denial to linger for too long. That isn’t all, right?

**::**

**::**

**::**

He expects disgruntlement and perhaps surprise when he appears on Clarke’s doorstep — nothing like the estimated neutrality he gets. Her hands are dirty, coated in colorful paint, and there’s a brown smudge right on top of her cheekbone.

“You got my message,” she notes.

“I did.”

She pauses. “You should go.”

There is a sharp pang in Bellamy’s chest and he falters for a minute. Anger surges up in him then.

“I’m not leaving. Not until you explain to me what the hell is going on. You can’t just write a few words to me and expect you’ll be left alone without there being an honest confrontation.”

Clarke huffs. “I said what I said. I meant it.”

“I didn’t come all the way here to change your mind,” says Bellamy. But he’s here, and he’s blindsided, and he needs to know why.

“You won’t.” She gives him a level stare, eventually letting him in. In spite of her acknowledgement, she doesn’t sit down with him. If it’s to make him feel uneasy and unwelcome or if it’s to maintain her control, Bellamy doesn’t know.

“You’re a good man, Bellamy.”

“I thought you said there were no good people. Only actions done for a greater good, driven by human-centered, selfish motives,” he spits out. He doesn’t allow her to clarify. “Get to the point, please.”

“I came back here and the house was full of memories of the dead.” Bellamy gets up, takes a step closer. She retreats, putting distance between them all over again. “Finn’s photograph. Niylah’s comb. Wells’ books. At first glance they’re just _things_ , inanimate objects that you can break and trash and stash away so you don’t deal with them anymore. But they have a life and soul of their own, remind you of everyone you have watched die. Of everyone _I_ have watched die. The children that I helped raise, only for them to grow old and perish.” Her eyes betray her vulnerability, as if begging him to follow her train of thought and come to her conclusion. “The making of those memories — bonding — that’s not what will make my days easier.”

He lets her finish, hears her out, because it’s impossible for him to digest whatever matters is out of her reach. It saddens him that she claims this is the way it’s supposed to be for her.

“Sometimes, though, I slip up. I forget. I’m weak.”

“You’re far from weak,” Bellamy argues. “Whoever told you this doesn’t have to be right. This isn’t their life you’re considering.”

“No, it’s not. It’s nothing like it.” She looks pointedly at him. It’s nothing like his, too. “My life doesn’t last eighty or ninety years, Bellamy, it lasts much longer. Probably forever. There are days I wake up holding onto a list of things and people. All I’m doing is cutting that list short. Holding onto the pain is pointless.”

He’d gone through that phase of dealing with what was thrown his way with _"push everyone away"_ as his motto. But he was a teenager then, far from the man time has shaped him into, and far from who Clarke has allowed herself to be. Far from who she could be, if she wanted.

Eternity is a long time to spend alone, shying away from everything and everyone.

Yet, that’s exactly what she does when he proceeds to approach her. She stumbles a little as she withdraws, straightening her posture when he doesn’t move any further.

“You should go.”

“If you need time, I’ll give you that,” Bellamy starts. He’d give her so much more than that, if she let him.

Clarke opens her mouth, inhaling sharply, like she has an answer for that, one she evidently regrets.

“But if you need someone who will pretend there is no worth in your life, I can’t help you. If sharing things with people brings you suffering, I don’t want to add to that.”

Silence fills the room, tying a rope around his neck.

He nears the outlet, ignoring how he yearns to look back. He waits for what held them together for no more than a few moments to put a strain on them; to stretch and to break. 

It doesn’t. He might as well have imagined it.

::

::

::

“What’s up with you?”

Miller hits ‘pause’, turning to look at him with a frown Bellamy can’t for the life of him pretend he missed. Like he can’t pretend his avatar hasn’t died like a million times on screen in the span of two hours.

“I’m just out of practice, is all,” Bellamy retorts, his grasp tightening around the wireless controller.

He cringes inwardly at the unimpressed roll of Miller’s eyes. “How’s Eric doing?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself when he comes home?” says Miller. “Unless, of course, you have somewhere else to be,” he adds, side eyeing him. Instead of being anxious, like usual, Bellamy feels an emptiness, something hollow.

How does he explain why he could never address his biggest concern for these past three months? Where does one even begin?

Now what?

“Seriously, though. What’s up with you?”

“Everything’s perfect,” Bellamy sasses. “Splendid.”

“I thought we were past keeping shit from each other.”

“We are.” This must be the closest Miller’s ever gotten to asking him whether he’s seeing someone.

“What? What’s so complicated?”

Bellamy shrugs. “Complicated is an understatement. It’s not my story to tell.”

"I call bullshit." A moment passes. "And I call dibs on that trophy. There's no way I'm taking pity on your sorry ass. You've gotta pretend to at least put some effort, Blake."

Bellamy's lips curve up, thankful. "You bet I will."

**::**

**::**

**::**

**III.)**

**::**

Summer rolls around faster than anticipated. The weather is considerably hotter than it usually is this time of the year, and Bellamy’s skin turns warm and clammy with the mildest physical exercise.

Octavia finally talks to him about Lincoln, and the few dates Bellamy was supposedly not aware of, then she goes as far as to plead with him to be open-minded and discreet. Octavia won’t admit there's something different to Lincoln but she clearly feels it and Bellamy would be blind not to see it. 

So he agrees to give Lincoln the benefit of the doubt while simultaneously hedging his bets because, truth be told, insisting to always have his way around his sister is draining, impossible, and getting kind of old.

After the school year is over, they pack. Octavia carries a suitcase — her biggest one yet — while he strives to expel the sorrow clouding his judgment on their drive from Arkadia to Shallow Valley. Lincoln meets them outside of Anya’s front yard. It took plenty of persuading, but Bellamy eventually approved of his sister’s choice of accommodation for the holidays.

“Are you sure you don’t prefer crashing with us?” Anya asks. “There’s still plenty of room for another.”

He declines, taking her up on her offer to point him to an inexpensive hostel instead. Vera Kane greets him with a smile.

In exchange for his stay, Mrs. Kane summons her son, Marcus, a man probably around the age Bellamy’s mother would have been, and they strike a reasonable deal.

Bellamy fills the temporarily vacant post in _Auto Shop Kane_ , already familiar with the basic information he needs for working at a garage from previous experiences. He meets Raven Reyes, who shows him around on his first day, and Zeke Shaw, who occasionally sits with him during lunch break. Raven and Zeke constantly butt heads, bickering, but they're pleasantly distracting with their dry humor and snarky remarks.

Days pass and his agitation increases. He's within Clarke's reach, waiting and waiting for something that might never come and that terrifies the hell out of him. 

It’s not until Lincoln indirectly refers to their trades that Bellamy’s brain really works. He requests to be in charge of the exchange for a couple of times, confident he knows his way in the woods a little better now.

Naturally, Lincoln is hesitant at first. His family has stood by Clarke’s side for years, ever since she started building a more permanent cabin for herself, with her bare hands at first and the aid of his great grandfather later. Loyalty runs deep, but if anyone knows Clarke, they won’t doubt her impressive ability to look out for herself.

Lincoln sure doesn’t.

When she sees Bellamy, recognizes him for afar, her step slows. She presses her lips into a hard line as soon as she reaches him, letting her interrogative glance say all that she doesn’t.

Bellamy extends his hand, holding out her way the bags Lincoln handed to him. She accepts them, passing him the meat with narrowed eyes. Their knuckles brush.

“Do you need anything else? For next time?”

If Clarke is torn by his presence, she doesn’t let it show.

“Where’s Lincoln?”

“Home. Everything’s fine, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he informs her.

She arches a doubtful eyebrow. “He trusted you with this?”

Bellamy knits his brows. "He and my sister are close. We’ve spoken some more. We have an understanding of sorts.”

“Lincoln is anything but bad news, if that’s what _you’re_ worried about.”

“So. Anything for next time?”

Something akin to hurt crosses her face and she grimaces. “Fertilizer.” She sounds tired. “Tell him I’d like some for my garden.”

She looks tired, too. Bellamy speculates about how her constant effort to regain strength will wear her down and he aches to take a step closer, to hold her. Clarke is human, after all, no matter how much she hates to fully recognize it. She’s just more unfortunate than others, that’s all.

He gives a brief nod; his temporary goodbye.

“See you in a week.” She doesn’t oppose him.

They meet on the exact same spot the following week and then the week after that. She is used to seeing him after the first time, her expression reserved but not unresponsive. He transfers Lincoln’s advice to her and she listens, understanding.

It’s only when he’s started accepting their newly forming routine that she turns the tables on him. “Do you like iced tea?” she asks.

Even after her question registers and he stands still, his bewilderment is present. “Sure,” he replies carefully, slowly. He resists the urge to shrug.

“I could make some. If you want to.”

Her eyes are earnest and expectant, bordering on nervous. _He wants to._ He tells her so. It’s ridiculous, the way his heart hammers beneath his ribcage at her growing smile.

**::**

**::**

**::**

Clarke’s cabin is cool — cooler than his room at Vera’s hostel. Bellamy takes a seat on the divan, pressing the icy glass of tea to his flushed cheek with a sigh and keeps it there until he shivers. He takes a sip, enough to soothe his parched mouth, as Clarke sits beside him.

He marvels at how easy talking to her again is. He tells her about his job and his break and she tells him about summer; how it’s her favorite season, how she likes wearing the dresses Lincoln’s mother sewed for her and walking barefoot in her garden.

They talk and they read and she shows him her drawings like before. She makes him try sweet potato pie. For the most part, it’s as if nothing ever happened, as if there are no questions and worries twirling around in his head when he’s alone at night. 

The next time — _times_ — it happens, it’s like this, too. He knows that when she talks about that little bird she caught, she wants him to see it before she lets it fly free, and when she procrastinates, she wants him to follow her for another glass of tea. He knows that it’s alright to ask her if she’s doing well.

He learns that she likes her cherries dark and plump.

He watches her devour them one by one from his spot on the other side of the table, and his gaze drifts from the pleased dimple of her cheek to the pucker of her mouth around the fruit. Her tongue pokes from between her lips, collecting the crimson juice she missed from the skin just below. She wipes the back of her palm against it.

She feels his eyes on her not long after that, pushing her bowl in front of him.

“You want some?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m good.” His attention returns to the small piece of paper before him and the messily scribbled numbers on it.

The feet of Clarke’s chair screech against the wood and he struggles to keep his gaze trained low. It’s useless when she’s finally close, lingering by his side. She bends a little so their faces are approximately on the same level.

“Bills?” she presumes.

“It’s kind of an outline for the month. I’m not being reckless, am I?”

“You could always stay somewhere else. Save some money.”

“’Can’t accept this,” he mutters under his breath. For a brief moment, he wonders if this was a personal suggestion, if she wasn’t just referring to Anya, but he knows all about where false hope has gotten him his entire life. He probably wouldn’t even be receptive to an underlying meaning.

It’s the tone of her voice that drives him to dangerous conclusions.

“Your pride always gets in the way. If you…” She trails off. He turns his head to his right to face her.

“It’s irrelevant to my pride,” Bellamy explains. “It’s just not the right thing to do.”

She hums in comprehension whilst her hand digs in the bowl for a cherry. She inspects it for a second or two, before she brings it right in front of his mouth.

“Just one,” she whispers exaggeratedly. His fingers itch to trace the shape of her playful grin.

 _Just one_ , he noiselessly promises, leaning into her general direction. He kind of has a preference for strawberries, but she doesn’t need to know that.

As his teeth gently clasp around the fruit, she plucks the stem, shoving it in her mouth, amused at his scoff. It’s still inside her mouth when he reaches for the piece of paper he was using and spits the kernel in it, crumpling it in his fist and throwing it on the table.

The stem emerges knotted on the tip of Clarke’s tongue. He barks out a laugh at the sight of it, affectionately squeezing her shoulder the moment she gets rid of it. He quiets down as she cups the sides of his face without a warning, running her thumbs over the warmth of his cheeks.

He doesn’t get to breathe, doesn’t get to pick up on the way her eyes burn a hole in him before she kisses him, moving sketchily against him.

He manages a curse when she detaches her lips for a split second. But the second is up and they collide once more, mouths pursuing a fulfilling rhythm, molding over one another. Her hands slide to the back of his neck, creeping under his shirt, spreading over his upper back.

He breaks away from her touch, pushing his forehead against hers. She tilts her head with a small whine, her eyes opening in her confused state. She leans forward as he leans back and she steals another almost-kiss from him. She gives him a peck on the corner of his mouth and then another right in the middle of it and another and _another._

“Clarke.” He doesn’t sound authoritative in the least, but his voice is firm enough for her lips to pause over his freckles. Her eyes are wide and round, mouth slightly agape.

“Is this not okay?”

“If you’re sure,” he says strictly.

It’s like he’s voiced a thousand questions he’s been dying to ask at once and, at her nod, a great amount of heaviness is gradually elevated.

“I am.” She pulls him up by his elbows. She lays her hands on his chest as he kisses her yet again and she snaps the button of his pants open when he sucks her tongue into his mouth. She plays with his zipper.

She _wants_ him here. And if she’s sure she wants to fuck him again – well, that’s an added bonus.

"Where's your room?" he mumbles against her. He secures his hands at her sides, grip tight and hungry.

"Attic. Upstairs." She moans. "Doesn't matter."

She tries to pull his jeans down, only for them to be stuck somewhere around his hips. A sound of genuine frustration escapes her and she gives his bottom lip a teasing bite, requesting his assistance.

"Right here?"

She speaks lightly. "Right here. Right now.”

His smile is cheeky. He can’t bring himself to tone it down. “I can work with that.”

They move in a flurry of awkward steps and short breaths, uncovering, nibbling, stroking. Clarke strips down to her panties, shimmying out of them in a heartbeat, and his fingers get tangled in her blonde hair, anchoring her.

She urges him to sit on the chair behind him, which is uncomfortable and exhilarating at the same time, and lowers herself on top of him with little effort.

“Condom,” he hisses. She asks him distractedly if he’s clean, tells him it had been a while for her, too.

“We can't — we're good,” she affirms.

She aligns him with her center and grabs the top of the chair for support when he drives into her for the first time. He thrusts upwards and their balance threatens to fail. Clarke curses, enfolding him tighter.

“You’ll fall off,” she warns.

He finds her earlobe, blowing hotly against it while she shifts in his lap. “You’ll fall off with me.”

“I’d rather not.” She places an open-mouthed kiss over his neck, baring her teeth. She picks up the pace after a couple of minutes, moving in circles when his breath comes in gasps. Bellamy searches desperately for a distraction, tries to latch onto something, but she fits just right against him, around him, skin too warm and delicate. It doesn’t work.

“Clarke,” he husks. “Slow down.”

She does when his thumb applies pressure on her hipbone, letting her eyelids droop. She’s lazy after that, licking her way into his mouth, and that does nothing to draw out his impending orgasm. He rocks into her shallowly until his self-control shatters and bliss engulfs him, rendering him speechless and spent.

His fist lands on the nearby wooden table in a mixture of resentment and embarrassment. He can feel the way Clarke tenses, startled by his outburst.

“Bellamy,” she says softly, and then more persistently as he makes a point of avoiding her eyes. He’s missed her. He’d never missed anyone like that before.

His mouth releases a small gust of air. “I’m—”

His half-finished apology vibrates against her fingers as she shushes him. He glances at a purplish cherry stain on her chapped lip, one he neglected to pay the desired attention to.

“We have time,” Clarke assures him, like it’s not a big deal, like it doesn’t make his heart leap and his chest ache in that oddly agonizing way he seems to crave.

His head moves of its own volition and Bellamy bets she’ll taste like cherries, too, if he kisses her again.

So this is what your first love tastes like.

Strawberries are overrated.

**::**

**::**

**::**

“Why did you let me come back?” Bellamy asks her one afternoon he’s curled up on her couch, book long neglected by his side. He’s been observing her carve out redstarts on a sanded piece of wood and has been thinking about his question for much, much longer than that.

“Which time?” Clarke says, playful and he forgets all about being nervous. He shrugs.

“Is there a different version for every time?”

“The short answer would be no, there isn’t,” she admits, solemn. “It’s why I first let you go, too.” The day he run for both Octavia's life and his comes to mind. The question has always been there, in the back of his head.

“You have so much heart in you, Bellamy. Believe people are capable of doing wondrous things. Even when all hope is lost.”

Clarke bows her head again, but she isn’t finished.

“It's not an unfamiliar mindset, I understand. But nothing of the sort happened to resonate with me. Not like this.”

“ _Hope is not lost, so long we’re still breathing_ ,” he’d told her once. He was taught as much. He was raised to have faith in humanity, learned there is this unwavering strength to it that can make you move mountains.

Clarke looks out the window and lets the absent-minded crease between her brows make its return. He has a feeling the long answer is something she has yet to figure out.

**::**

**::**

**::**

One of the following mornings, he French braids her hair and helps her choose a pair of relatively regular sandals and they return to the village together. After they descend the stairs from his room, where he looked for a change of clothes, Vera inspects their joined hands with a knowing smile and invites them to keep her company at breakfast.

Breakfast with Vera is a frequent and enjoyable occurrence for Bellamy, and this time is no exception. It doesn’t hurt that Clarke wins her over from the very start. The conversation is light, straying from personal details, and Clarke leans in, absorbed by the normalcy of it all.

Their words eventually peter out and quietness ensues.

“I’d met a girl like you once,” Vera recalls thoughtfully. “The resemblance is spectacular.”

Bellamy locates Clarke’s bare knee under the table, placatory fingers keeping her in place.

“Clarke’s from back home,” he lies. Clarke’s streak for self-defense kicks in soon after that, when she fills in on her family’s pseudo information. Her ancestors supposedly resided in Arkadia long before her.

“Well, she had a smile just as bright,” Vera continues. “And her beauty was like that of an angel’s.”

A short laugh makes it past Clarke’s lips. “I’m no angel, Mrs. Kane,” she comments.

“Nonsense,” Vera dismisses her disagreement. “None of us is flawless, dear. You’re something else."

Bellamy clinks his half-full glass of orange juice against Clarke’s. “That she is.”

She develops a strange interest in the patterns of her plate, tracing the rim with the pad of her finger. She chews in silence for the rest of the meal.

After Vera thanks them wholeheartedly, they go back to Bellamy’s sleeping quarters. He delves into his bag, where he retracts a medium-sized bottle of sunscreen from.

“For you,” he clarifies. Her skin is fair and sensitive, lighter than Octavia’s. Thanks to his sister, he knows all about late morning walks and sunburns.

After little to no protesting from Clarke, he screws the lid open. He caresses her forehead, mischievously pinches her nose, rubs her exposed shoulders.

“You have nice hands,” she wheezes. “Sometimes I think about drawing them.”

“Yeah?”

Clarke doesn’t voice her affirmation, but she leans back, against him, just a little more. He allows himself a moment to appreciate everything about this, repelling the temptation to hang on her words and keep up with the puns.

He averts his eyes from her creamy complexion. He slides the spaghetti strap back on her shoulder.

“All set.”

**::**

**::**

**::**

He’s barely wiped the grease off his hands when Raven calls out to him from the front of the shop.

“Blake Junior’s waiting for you,” she lets him know.

Soon enough, Octavia is by his side, tupperware in hand. “You got my text this morning, right? About lunch,” she says.

“I got it,” he replies, receiving the plastic container. Curious, he takes a peek. “Chicken salad sandwich? You’re the _best_.”

She grins. “I hoped you’d be up for it.”

“You don’t have to bring me lunch at work, you know. Your place as favorite sister is intact.” He sees the punch on his bicep coming a mile away.

“Idiot,” she grumbles fondly. Bellamy expects a mock salute and her departure, but he gets a big bear hug, which is irrefragably better. They part after few seconds.

“I know I don’t say this often, but — you deserve the world, Bell. You’ve been so different and closed off since Mom died, with me and with everyone around you. I love seeing you smile again.”

He pats her cheek twice, tells her he loves her, too. 

“Anyway. I thought we should go out tonight. Just us Blakes. What do you think?”

He thinks that he missed having her close to him. He thinks that he’s never been more grateful for the decision to let her be her own person. Otherwise, they would have never mellowed out — the ill feelings wouldn’t have started to subside. He thinks Aurora could have been proud of them.

“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

**::**

**::**

**::**

“Here. You’ll be dehydrated.”

He raises his head, meeting Clarke’s gaze from where he’s crouched down on the ground. His eyes flit to the glass of water in her hand. He rises to his full height, taking two hasty sips, before he thanks her.

“You pulled out all my weeds!” she yelps after realization dawns on her.

“Weeds are meant to be pulled out,” Bellamy reminds her, amused.

“It helps kill time.” She pouts stubbornly. “How did you get here?” 

“My uncle used to make us watch in the backyard when we were younger. He likes gardening.”

Clarke looks like she’s considering something. “And snares,” she ponders. Her tone is questioning, like she’s almost unsure about whether memory serves her right.

“And snares,” he repeats, bending a little to brush his lips against hers.

“Come on, let it go,” she pleads, gesturing vaguely to her plants. “Let’s get inside.”

“Let’s not.” He gestures higher and she squints, blinded from the light. “The sun won’t set for at least another two hours. We could walk to that clearing.” 

So they do.

Halfway there, a bird flaps its wings, shrieks. “I wish I could be a bird. Fly around the world,” Clarke muses.

“You can still travel, you know. Just in a different way.” There’s so much beauty in this universe and she deserves to taste every last trace of it, from hot, golden sea sand to rocky hills and steep mountains.

Her gait is quicker, but his legs are longer, taller, and their walk becomes more synchronized as they gravitate towards one another. Interlaced fingers is a thing now, too, which Bellamy has grown to anticipate. It provides a newfound comfort, a recognizable firmness inside him. It reminds him that, amidst the instability and the hectic highs and lows, there are things he's sure of, things he wouldn't change for the world.

Their hands swing in the space between them, finally meeting halfway. She looks at him for a while, maybe longer than it took for him to sense it, and her strides slow as her lips part. Intensity awakens inside him.

“I could do this forever.”

“What? Walk?” he concludes with a curious frown.

She cracks a smile and then it’s gone, like it never graced her mouth with its illusive presence. “Something like that.”

Bellamy’s feet have come to a stop by now.

“I know it’s an unusual moment to fixate on,” she concedes. “There are so many others I could have picked from. You may even think it’s silly.”

 _Forever_. Regardless of whether she was going for the literal sense of the word or not, it’s definitely not silly. He gets it. He wonders if, maybe, this should be a moment for him, too, if he should treasure it in the distant future, if he will.

He squeezes her hand, bringing it close to his chest. “No. I like this one.” 

**::**

**::**

**::**

The hours melt into days, and the days into weeks, without him even realizing it. The leaves begin to fall from the trees and, with the chilling breeze, cruel reality sinks into Bellamy’s bones. He and Octavia return to their fast-paced lives.

Clarke takes up the majority of space in his mind, still. Visits to the cabin in the woods become sparse as free time gets harder to come by.

But he finds flowers in the middle of his trip there, because even though he isn’t naïve enough to believe nothing will be different, he is hell-bent on making it work. He will make it work.

One day, he weaves a purple flower into her hair.

“That’s an aster,” he explains, combing fair strands behind her ear. “It’s the greek word for star. There’s a myth about Goddess Astraea and everything.”

“I know.” She looks up at him. “My mother used it to treat her patients who were sick with the flu. It helped with the coughing.”

She rises on her tiptoes, only breathing against his lips for a couple of seconds, and then he captures her mouth with his, willing and a little impatient. She responds quickly, fervently, but it’s different somehow. It’s sweeter than what he’s used to, longer than he expected, and he has to inhale through his mouth as well, sighing.

Her hands are too careful on either side of his neck, her balance caving in. He secures her weight in his grasp, arms twining around her torso.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. She casts her eyes down, reluctant. As his concern seems to deter her, his hold breaks.

It’s only then that he lets his gaze wander. Everything is quiet, like it’s always been. Everything is the same. Except for the dark brown duffel bag on the floor, right next to the ceramic plant pot.

He would very much like to ignore the dread building up in him, to believe that his assumptions are too surreal to be true. Clarke’s hand moves to her jacket, where she fumbles with the seam of her pocket.

A flame burns in his chest, swiftly turning into a full-blown, raging fire that licks at him aggressively, ruthlessly, like he’s made of wood. He’s afraid that if he doesn’t utter a word, it will scorch him beyond recognition.

“You’re leaving,” he accuses. Her hand stills. Her look of defeat tugs at his heartstrings. “How long?”

“For good.” She doesn’t even flinch.

Bellamy runs a frantic hand over his hair, mussing it. “Where are you gonna go?”

The question startles her and she hesitates. “I don’t know,” she says confusedly. “It doesn’t matter. This — it isn’t what you want. You can do so much better. You should.”

“You don’t know what I want,” he counters hotly.

“You’re keeping things from your family. You’re losing the trust your friends, the people who have supported you your entire life, have in you. For what? Living a lie, is that what pleases you?”

“It’s not a lie. You wouldn’t consider leaving otherwise. We wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he points out.

“You have feelings for me!” she exclaims, a blush of exasperation creeping up her face. “Even if I share them, there is a limit to what I can do for you. There are things you can never get from me.”

The lines of irritation between her brows are there, more prominent than ever, but her voice softens when she speaks next. “You’re still so young,” she murmurs. “You’ve been through difficult times, but the growing doesn’t stop. Your opinions will change. You will experience more, covet more. And someone _will_ keep up with all that. Som—”

“Don’t patronize me,” Bellamy interrupts bitingly. “Don’t make this about me.”

“What do you want me to say?” she cries in exasperation. “That I’m tired of wishing I could be like you? That I’m sick of being led to an impasse every single time? Because I am. I _am_. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“Getting away is the solution?” he demands incredulously.

“It’s a start,” she insists.

He shakes his head, his nostrils flaring. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“It doesn’t work at all!” Her words resound through the room loud enough for his repartee to have a hard time breaking away from his mouth, long enough for them to sink in, tearing him down.

“All this time, I’ve been prolonging the inevitable, when I should have been done with this from the very start. I should have been done with you.”

“That’s a fucking low blow,” Bellamy barks out at her.

“That’s the way it is. You keep coming back for me,” she emphasizes. “You were willing to lose everything – you _are_ – and yet you don’t see it.”

“It’s not all black and white. Those decisions are mine to make.” He locks his jaw, gritting his teeth. 

“You don’t understand,” Clarke says, voice quivering hazardously. “I’ve been insatiable and merciless since I’ve had no one to forbid me from acting out. I’ve been selfish. I won’t ever say I don’t want you.”

“Then don’t,” he pleads.

Breathing out, Clarke lets her shoulders slump. Bellamy waits, the unreadable expression marring her facial features doing nothing to ease his agitation.

“It has to be a start for me. I have to believe I can do better. Be the good man, too.” Bellamy scoffs. “I’ve been fighting for this home for a long time, but I don’t fit in here. I can’t stay. Not anymore."

Bellamy’s head fills in the blank. _Not for you._

"What is this, your last words to everyone you’ve left behind? Have you ever faced anyone, given them a chance to say goodbye?”

"Stop," she commands.

“Did you ever, for a minute, stop to wonder how they must have felt? Or are you the one to always give the orders?”

"Get out," she whispers in answer. The tone of her voice makes Bellamy's hair stand on end in the most bloodcurdling way. 

Clarke's eyes begin to mist from the beads of sorrow welling up.

"Just go, Bellamy," she requests.

"Why? Why do this now? What's so different?" he inquires in despair.

Her silence speaks louder than her mouth, and it shows more than her stricken expression or the small quiver of her chin ever will.

He is the one who's changed. He'd been rightfully selfish with her, too, in the past. His mind was clear as day whenever it came to prioritizing and there were still things that came before her, people he considered first; from teenage drama and silly blood oaths to promises he gave by his mother's birthing bed.

And it's not like those don't matter as much to him anymore. His throat still gets clogged when he tries to remember how his baby sister’s hysterical crying mingled with the soothing sound of Aurora's voice and the world stopped spinning. He remembers the first day Miller sat next to him in preschool and they plotted to pull on pigtails together. He remembers the time Murphy scraped his knee on the pavement and Harper rushed over with Bellamy and the first-aid kit she had gotten for Christmas so they could play doctors together. He still takes trips down memory lane.

But the lines blurred as the mystery Clarke was escorted by neared its finish and, as his thirst for it was slowly quenched, another sprang up. She crept up on him quietly, formidably shaking him to the core.

Her arms fold over her chest, enveloping her.

“Everyone runs ahead of me. You will, too.”

She’s vulnerable, almost too fragile, in that moment and Bellamy hears more than he reads on her lips. She’ll fall behind. She already has, and there’s nothing he can do about that, nothing in his power.

With her head bowed low, Clarke slips away from him. He knows the way out.

**::**

**::**

**::**

She’s curled in a fetal position on top of her bedspread when Bellamy finds her, back turned against the door he pushes open. She doesn’t jolt at the sound of his approach, doesn’t stir after the mattress dips a little beneath her with his weight, signaling his presence.

He reaches out, and his decisiveness wavers shortly, but his fingers paint remorse on the length of her spine, always finding their way. This is Clarke, and he loves her, and he can’t imagine a whole wide universe where he doesn’t fight for this burden to be lighter, where she doesn’t fight back.

“I never want to hurt you,” he says faintly, like it’s a secret, one that’s meant to titillate her ears only.

There’s movement under his palm; the involuntary tremor of her upper back, the giveaway hint of life within her. He inhales the smell of her hair splayed on the pillow with a sweep of his lips.

“Don’t do this alone,” he implores. 

He’s prepared for more, urges himself to try harder, because even though he has a knack for inspirational speeches and influential words, he’s had a hard time with externalizing his inner thoughts and troubles over the years.

But a switch just _flips_ and Clarke’s suddenly exhaling harshly against his chest, unsteady, inching closer, higher. Her sob, dry and tearless, reverberates on the hollow of his throat and she kisses his neck, his jaw.

“Don’t go, okay?”

He clings to her so hard he might as well be crushing her, but she clings harder, silencing him. She buries her face in the crook of his neck, nuzzling.

They stay like this, unmoving, until his terror dissipates and turns into something sweeter, gentler and familiar, something unavoidably connected to her.

He welcomes her weight on top of him until the hold of his arms loosens a little around her smaller form and a peaceful slumber pulls him under.

**::**

**::**

**::**

He dreams of rain.

It doesn't soak him. He doesn't really see or smell it either, that distinctive earthly odor of soil and dust, not like it would happen under normal circumstances. He does, however, feel the absence of warmth that was a little too close to paralyzing him the day he lost his sister in the woods. The day his life took a turn, for better or for worse.

He hears the rain fall and thump on the glass of the window, begging for his attention. He fumbles for soft hands and the scent of pine, for a heartbeat that's barely his, but his brain's gone fog and he comes up short.

This state of mind, confusing and unappealing as it is, prompts him to seek for his reality, to let his eyes fall open and his mouth open in a gasp.

Not much changes.

There is a recognizable pit in the space where Clarke was asleep next to him, demanding the instant return of his terror in full force. By the time he registers she is nowhere to be seen, he notices the small quilt covering his bare feet, draped over his legs. Instead of being comforting, it feels heavy, restraining him.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes, jumping from his position on the bed when he’s confident the weightiness in his head won’t bring him down all over again.

He searches for her, lingering on room after room. He picks up the pace right as his heartbeat does, his foot almost missing a stair step on the way down, and voices buzz in his head. He stares at the empty spot where he last saw her duffel bag and the noise stops at once.

She can’t have gone far.

Bellamy ties his shoelaces in a blinded hurry and then he bolts, faster than he’s been in years, louder than he’s been in months. He screams for her until he is deprived of his voice, his throat raw and aching.

His bellows are raucous, drowned by the rainfall. He pushes back the hair that gets plastered to his forehead in a futile attempt to shun the brutal shudder that overcomes him anyway, because his clothes are drenched, glued on his body.

She hasn’t gone far. _Has she?_

His sneakers stomp on the mud over and over and over. He calls out for Clarke again, one more time. One last time.

He bends down, hands resting on his knees while he catches his breath, shoulders heaving from the exertion.

He’ll find her. He’ll dry up and, after the rain calms, he’ll find her like he did with Octavia months ago. 

**::**

**::**

**::**

There is a letter.

Wells’ book is laid on top of the kitchen table, and when Bellamy picks it up, contemplating about how it’s worth another browse, he’s greeted with Clarke’s cursive handwriting. His name is right there, on the first line of a three-paragraph passage. A horrible feeling of déjà vu hits him.

He’s lighting a fire to heat up when he really begins to process what the situation is about, to question it, and bitterness rises up in him.

She _left_. She left him with nothing but a vapid piece of paper, which she couldn’t have possibly put her hands on after he rooted out wildflowers for her. She’d planned this. How long ago did it first cross her mind? How many times did she consider it and how many more did she get close to actually going through with it?

He squats down in front of the heat of the flames, feeling his eyes water. Whether it’s from the rapid change of temperature or from what he’s yet to fully acknowledge, he rips the page clumsily, impetuously, wrinkling it.

He won’t read what she couldn’t utter. He wants to hear her say it.

He tears the paper apart and feeds the letter to the roaring fire.

**::**

**::**

**::**

“I need a pen,” Bellamy announces, shoving a small stack of blank pages on the counter of Lincoln’s butcher shop. The man looks at him from the other side like he feels the need to comment on his rough movements, or the growl booming in his chest after every single word. Like he probably knows. (Of course he does.)

Lincoln’s out of Bellamy’s sight only for a minute before he returns, requested object in hand. He ushers him inside, makes him sit down at the table. He sends Anya to the front.

Bellamy hands the pen back to him.

“Tell me what you know. Where she is, where she said she’d go. Write it down, if you have to.”

Lincoln’s answer is a look he can’t decipher.

“She made her choice,” Lincoln says after a while. “She’s on her own now.”

“She’ll be eaten alive,” Bellamy argues. “She has no solid income, no one to help her, no family to go back to.” If he cares about her, even in the slightest, Lincoln _must_ have tried to make her see reason.

“We're family, Anya and I. If she needs to come back, she knows how.” Lincoln taps his pen a couple of times on the counter. “Clarke’s smart. Her decision wasn’t impulsive. She was clear about having no desire to be found.”

Bellamy shakes his head in disagreement.

“Can you tell me anything about the place she comes from?” he asks. “Clarke’s drawn it a handful of times.”

Lincoln’s fingers wrap around the pen. He collects his thoughts for a few seconds, before it starts moving on the paper.

"Not much is special about it. There's a very slim chance you'll recognize anything just from drawings, after so much time.” Lincoln lifts his gaze once more, pushing the piece of paper over to him.

There's a couple of names on it, too few of them. “Here's most of what I’ve gathered throughout the years. That might still turn out to be about as helpful as I am, though.”

“What else?” Bellamy presses.

“She hasn’t been to many places. Not that I know of.”

Bellamy conceals his face in his hands, forcefully rubbing his forehead. “There must be something more. Think!”

“Hey!” Anya intervenes. “Do you want me to kick you out?” she warns.

“I’m not here to impose,” Bellamy mutters.

She scoffs. “You’re damn right you aren’t.”

“Anya,” Lincoln says, appeasing. “I’ve got this.”

“Just – think, alright? You are the person Clarke could trust the most,” Bellamy reminds him regretfully.

Lincoln disagrees. "I wouldn't be helping you, if that was the case."

Then he writes down all he’s ever heard, all he’s ever seen. He writes down everything. (It’s nothing.)

**::**

**::**

**::**

Bellamy seeks her for many months.

Lincoln’s information turns out to be inadequate and, after a while, he has no lead. He, frivolously and futilely, invests his time and energy in looking for something he won’t ever find.

At the end of the day, he has Octavia, who brings him down to earth. There are still arguments that make him red in the face and days he wants nothing more than to tear his own hair out. There are still fights that end in tears. But those confrontations knock sense into him, remind him of what his obligations consist of.

She stands right by Bellamy’s side when he struggles with work, when inspiration strikes and a newfound determination pushes him back to his feet. He mends his relationship with his friends, sews the holes he didn’t even realize he had opened. Reconciliation is not the easiest part, but time heals some of the deepest wounds, crafting him into someone who learns to appreciate that.

And so he heals. He, in turn, inspires and he writes and lets the pain soak into him until acceptance makes his days brighter. He falls in love again. 

In his nightmares, Clarke is the one he still chases. Three years into moving forward, it is her who finds him.

**::**

**::**

**::**

**::**

**::**

**IV.)**

**::**

It is her who finds him and everything is different, from the neatly trimmed hair brushing the tops of her shoulders to the sincere confidence with which she holds herself, the way she wears her heart upon her sleeve.

Out of all the places he had imagined he would see her again and all the places his traitorous mind made him fleetingly think he might have actually seen her, the park he performs his morning running routine is at the very bottom of any list.

She sits on the grass with her feet perched on the pavement Bellamy has reserved for his stretching exercises, bolting upright at his approach. He doesn’t catch her eye at first, either, when his heartbeat evens out and he sucks in a generous breath of fresh air.

She stammers out his name with a rasp that sparks curiosity and unrest in him, a sound that’s been catalogued unfamiliar after all this time.

Panic laces her features as the seconds tick away and Bellamy wonders if he looks as light-headed and dumbfounded as he feels, if she’s afraid he will faint and slump on the dirt any moment now. He tries to breathe out _Clarke_ , tries to recall whether this is a scenario that could have once played over in his head, tries to move his limbs and remove the hair matted down over his brow. But his tongue feels dry and heavy in his mouth and his brain is buzzing with questions — so many of them he misses that she’s speaking her first words to him, misses that she’s expecting his retort, listening.

He focuses on the rustling of the leaves instead, catches sight of Clarke’s small birthmark above her upper lip as it moves, tries to grasp at the situation and not completely _lose it_ , somehow.

“— and this was apparently the least crowded place and least crowded hour —”

“How did you get here?” he cuts in, conscious at last. He needs to hold the reigns of this, whatever _this_ is and whatever direction it is supposed to be taking.

“Lincoln. He said he’d pick me up at seven,” she offers and that doesn’t answer what Bellamy really meant to ask at all. On the contrary, it creates a riot in his head. Bewilderment and astonishment and ire all compete for his attention, demanding to be addressed first, to give shape to his words.

He cuts to the chase, tone biting. “What are you really doing here, Clarke?”

She nods, quickly, clearly prepared for the question he throws her way and he almost misses her small flinch. She clears her throat. “I’ve been staying with Anya for a couple of months now, ever since Lincoln moved out. The village needs a doctor temporarily — I’m helping out a bit until they find a more permanent solution.”

Clarke pauses, allowing the singing birds to take over for the small break she makes. They hear rapidly approaching footfalls on the gravel and a middle-aged woman passes them by with a smile, continuing with her leisurely jog. Bellamy follows her movements distractedly, but Clarke keeps her eyes trained on his face, persistent.

“I’ve been hearing a lot about you lately. Octavia has been over several times, to carry boxes and arrange the transport of the paintings. I’m really happy you’re doing well, Bellamy,” she tells him in earnest and she moves her arm as if to reach out to him, but then she flexes her fingers and lets her hand drop back at her side, relaxing her posture. He senses a fresh wave of determination when she speaks again. “I’ll be back in town for the opening of Lincoln and Octavia’s art gallery. I thought you should hear it from me, considering how — considering how everything went down.”

She looks at him, sheepish, and Bellamy feels dread all of sudden, like being out in the open, surrounded by trees and being licked at by the gentle morning wind of late September is not enough to keep him centered. Like he can’t handle the brightness of her eyes or the gentleness of a smile once so sharp it could cut you open. He channels all the accumulating, perilous energy into naming the facts that have been all too real, what he knows.

“You left without a word, is what went down. You left me,” he reminds her, bitter.

“I know,” Clarke mutters ruefully. “I was wondering if you would like to meet up later today, somewhere. So we could talk. It could be lunch or just a walk here, in the park. Your call, of course.”

“You want to talk. After three years of nothing,” he accuses before he can help it, incredulous. He thought he was devoid of his ill feelings towards Clarke for fleeing and towards himself for letting it all unfold. He thought his body was utterly drained of negativity as months and years rearranged the pieces of his broken heart with only scars to show. But all he feels now is the sickness in his stomach, the spinning of his head, the burning fever. He puts effort in controlling his respiration and restraining his temper before his mouth can have a mind of its own.

“I know why you thought you had to go,” says Bellamy. “I get it, I do.”

Clarke sees the ‘ _but’s_ ’ coming and completes his sentence for him, shouldering the rest of the burden. “You’re not ready to do this. I get it, too. It’s not fair I sprang this on you.” She observes him quietly.

“No, it’s not,” he agrees. “None of this has been fair.”

“I had to see you before. Before you heard from someone else,” Clarke clarifies.

He wants to tell her what he’s really heard and what he hasn’t and what he often wished he would hear. He wants to tell her about the letters and the encrypted postcards Lincoln received from her over a year ago, from the Honduras and from Chile.

“It’s fine,” he tells her instead. It doesn’t feel fine.

“I guess I’ll see you in four weeks, then,” she presumes.

Bellamy shrugs, awkward. “It’s my sister’s big night. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

She offers a knowing smile at that and something warm takes root in the pit of his stomach, fluttering, rendering him uncertain of what to actually do with it. He lets it settle down for a minute but all it does is jump and tug and poke at the very scars marring his heart.

One in particular stands out, a _Clarke_ -shaped one he hadn’t kept track of. It pains him more than he expects, but a newfound energy awakens every last bit of him and his skin crackles with something electric, something that gives him life and has a life of its own all the same.

He carries the vibrancy and the spark with him for the rest of his day.

**::**

**::**

**::**

He sees her again early, two days before the event.

He’s been aiding Octavia with her last few chores for the past couple of days, running errands and crossing off items from long, thorough lists. He insists to take over on his own, offering her the much-needed opportunity to rest and pauses to take a breather sometime around noon. He picks a painting to spend his small break in front of, one hidden in what he can imagine would be a quiet spot for contemplation during the busiest days of the gallery.

He is munching on his half-eaten sandwich when he really notices the gentleness and the simplicity of the artwork, the way the brushes of the creator danced on the canvas in flawless purple, orange and brown pirouettes.

He basks in the serenity and the warmth the color combination emits and tries to make out the shapes and the sounds, enamored. He hears the waves lapping the ashen sand of a quiet coast in the unknown, sees the huts in the distance among the coconut trees, feels the humidity stick to the hair on his arms. There is a big wooden chunk of something on the surface of the water that could have once belonged to a tree trunk or a makeshift boat, probably washed away by the ocean. If he closed his eyes, he bets he could smell and taste the salt on his tongue.

“What do you think?” a voice breaks him out of his reverie.

Clarke.

He wipes away remnants of mayonnaise from the corner of his lips, eyes round. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he admits, but his surprise fades away little by little. He makes a motion with his head, jerking his chin to the painting. “Yours?”

“Yes,” Clarke confirms and she sounds a tad bit unsteady, nearly nervous.

“It’s… something else,” Bellamy manages, the underlying praise somehow making its way into his tone. “Where is it?” he asks, positively curious.

“Mompiche,” she replies. Their gazes meet and lock and the faint bitterness is replaced by Bellamy’s nascent craving to know more.

This time, he lets his eyes roam over her and note all the different ways running away and the sea and _Mompiche_ has treated her. He observes the slightly darker tint of skin on her arms, her knees and her face, the residual proof of being kissed by the sun, her colorful earrings and the abstract patterns of blue and yellow on her tie-dye T-shirt. There is a light pink tuft of hair on the right side of her head and he acknowledges its presence.

“You dyed your hair.”

“You have a beard,” Clarke retaliates as if in reflex and his surprised snort of amusement is followed by silent laughter shaking her from her chest to her shoulders.

Small talk was never their strong suit.

Clarke gestures towards her work again. “It’s called ‘Hope’”,” she announces unexpectedly, before Bellamy can process what this is all about, and the impact of her words is profound, the aftershocks of the sweetest ache making his everything tingle.

“It was the night I was reborn. The beginning of _my_ beginning,” she says in a light, enigmatic tone. Impromptu poems only serve for confusing him more.

“I hurt my leg on the pointy edge of a scrap metal sometime during the day — I can’t really remember when, exactly. The gash was deeper than a scratch, but I knew I couldn’t risk making people worry and observe too much, so I panicked and I hid in the jungle.” She shuts her eyes briefly, lost in her own narration. Bellamy shifts his body towards her, lips parting ever so slightly, eager for more.

“I bled on my own for hours and by the time dusk came, the forest was already vibrating with life and my wound wouldn’t close. I finally went to the shore to wash it and let the salt burn it for a bit, careful not to be spotted by many.” A smile pulls at Clarke’s mouth at the memory. “I sat down on the sand with my clothes on. The water came up to my waist and I watched the sun set, stayed put until I shivered.”

Her mood, contagious and compelling as it is, sends warmth spreading from his lungs to his throat. Images flash and the painting before him moves, Clarke snatching the starring role in it like she was meant to. He sees the ocean embrace her and the graphite gray sand glisten on her feet and in her fists as nature hums and roars around her.

“Then, I stood and went to bandage my cut,” Clarke continues. “I couldn’t sleep a wink. The night seemed endless, but I got through it. All I heard was your voice — you were all I could think about,” she declares, eyes gleaming. “The wound was still there in the next morning and many mornings after that. And I felt it, I did, Bellamy.”

“Felt what?” he utters after a beat, voice hoarse.

“Hope. That everything would be alright, no matter what. That I could have peace, even though I didn’t know what the future held.”

That had always been the case with her, her obsessive quest for peace. Bellamy realized as much long ago. Her peace started with violence, egoistic curiosity and all the downfalls of human nature, things decided on her behalf by others. Her peace was reduced to a mere word, developed in a distorted, worn-down definition fast, one that was driven by her unwavering instinct for survival. What held it in place, however, was her need to fit it into her moral molds, to make it her purpose. Nevertheless, it always ended with her hurting those around her and consequently making an enemy of herself, partly as self-inflicted punishment.

It had all been a vicious cycle, repeating itself over and over again.

“You would think knowing you might never die makes you dauntless. But now, with every change my body is subject to every day, every new mark and every hair turning gray, I feel like I can breathe,” she tells him.

“How long have you known?” His query comes out incomplete, one of the many unspoken questions triggered by his astonishment, but Clarke understands nonetheless.

“Since sixteen months ago.” She looks at him, _really_ looks at him, and sees a thousand little thoughts pass him by. “You don’t have to say anything,” she is quick to add. “I don’t expect to be validated or comforted. It’s not why I came back.”

“What I want to say is that I’m tired, Clarke,” Bellamy retorts. “I’m tired of being mad at you for leaving like you did and for cutting me off. Telling me you were doing okay would have been enough. I would have never pushed for more.” She nods. She knows.

“I don’t want to feel that way anymore. Holding onto the hard feelings is the last thing on my to-do list for the day after tomorrow. I want everything to be perfect, like planned.”

“And it will be,” Clarke promises. “I’m looking forward to it, too. Art has been Lincoln’s dream for a very long time. I’m proud of him for carrying it through.”

Silence follows her voice and fills the room for the next minute. They’ve come so much closer since she crept towards him and he finds her proximity almost disconcerting. He glances at the painting and she notices.

“To answer your first question,” she starts. “This work is yours as much as it is mine,” she claims, a hint of gratefulness slipping in. Bellamy isn’t sure whether it’s something he imagined and he’s glad she leaves it at that.

On the other hand, he can’t help being overwhelmed by sheer admiration for her and all she’s accomplished, for the fearless woman that she is. Three years ago, she would have dried her clammy hands on the fabric of her denim skirt in a place like this. Now, she’s telling the world her story.

She’s grinning at him when he sighs and his heart sighs with him and suddenly tears are brimming at her eyes.

“I thought about this day so many times,” she quivers. “Seeing you again, it doesn’t even _compare_ —” She makes a sound between a gasp and an almost-sob, fingers seeking him out and brushing his arm, his wrist, landing on his palm.

It’s so damn unfair.

He crushes her to him before he can even blink. Her breathing is uneven against him, lips pressed to the junction between his neck and his shoulder, hands twined around his middle and clasped together like vines. It’s asphyxiating, the way they hold each other, but Clarke laughs, chest rumbling joyfully against his, so his grip doesn’t loosen. He welcomes the smoothness of her curves and the way she still fits against him like a key to a lock.

It dawns on him with a start that her hair doesn’t smell of petrichor anymore.

She pulls away and grasps both of his hands in hers, squeezing. “We’ll meet again in two days, right?” she inquires and lets go of him. He thrusts his hands in his pockets. “I’d love to hear about your book. I got a copy recently, from a bookstore nearby.”

“Got some pointers?” Bellamy jokes. This work is hers as much as it is his, after all.

“You’re the historian,” she says light-heartedly. “I _am_ curious about one specific part or two, however.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” 

The smiles grow, but the heaviness in the air grows as well. Bellamy uses his watch as an excuse to check the time and remind her that he still needs to carry on with what he was occupied with before she arrived. Clarke, in turn, asks about Lincoln, the original purpose of her visit.

Frankly, Bellamy’s terrified of the banter and the realization that being in her presence again is so unbelievably effortless. He’s missed her, terribly so, and the fact that he can admit it to himself is twice as terrifying.

He walks her to the exit with tension on his shoulders he knows will take a while to be dispelled.

They finally part with the promise of the day after tomorrow and one less wedge driven between them.

::

::

::

The opening of the gallery goes off without a hitch. 

The room fills with small crowds, background jazz music and pleasant chatter and Bellamy breathes a satisfied sigh right from the beginning of the evening. Lincoln and Octavia build a coordinated rhythm while they move among the right people, lighting up the place with joyous energy.

Half an hour into the event, he gives Harper and Miller a short tour of the artwork and that's about when he first sees her.

Clarke's in a deep blue dress that looks like it was sewn for the sole purpose of making his throat dry, so he swallows thickly and forces his gaze to be directed elsewhere. Not being able to help himself, he chances a peek at her every few minutes, when she shares a polite greeting with a minutely-tense Octavia, when she sips juice from her glass, when she stops before every painting with wonder.

When she strikes up conversation with Monty and with Raven, in a way that's clearly familiar to them.

When she notices him, from across the room, and satisfies his thirst for attention with just an upward curve of her lips, but gives him the space he needs anyway.

He carries on as he supposes he would have in her absence. And yet, when the hours pass and she makes a beeline for the outlet, a weight piles up on his chest. 

Without giving it a second thought, he strides towards the exit, sprinting a little once he's outside. 

He finds her seated on one of the benches nearby, calls her name with an urgency that caught up with him only just now.

"Bellamy," she addresses him, puzzled.

"Are you leaving?"

"No, I was just taking a phone call," she explains, realization slowly smoothing out the confused wrinkle on her forehead. 

"Oh." 

"I would have said goodbye."

He brushes it off with an " _it's fine_ " gesture, in hopes of breaking the ice. "I was going to say — I've ordered some pretty interesting tea varieties. We could go have a more quiet talk, if you're not tired after this."

Clarke nods. "I'd like that."

"Good." 

Ten years ago, his younger self would have cringed at his choice of beverage, especially for inviting a girl to his place. Tonight, Bellamy knows better than to mix Clarke and alcohol all in the same night.

"I should get back inside. See you in a bit," he promises.

True to his word, he meets her at the same spot fourty-five minutes later and she loops their arms, radiating warmth. The wind sends a whiff of jasmine emanating from her skin to his nose. 

He drives her home.

He makes them hot tea as she kicks off her shoes and inspects the apartment with interest.

"The decoration is a little different," she notes. "It's more you." It's not long before she finds his still-expanding bookcase and brightens.

More him, indeed. After his sister moved out and he decided to go apartment hunting as well, he realized there were many things meant to be left behind and many more meant to take the shape his hands and his heart commanded.

They sit on his couch, tea in hand, silent. Bellamy steals some of his cup's heat with the underside of his palms. Clarke informs him about burning her tongue with a discreet hiss. 

He remembers how she walked up to his friends a couple of hours ago, how her body shifted closer to them as they dove deeper into their talk.

"You know Monty and Raven," Bellamy tells her, but it comes out more like a question.

"I met Raven first," she confirms. "On a bus in Mexico. We bonded over our first heartbreak, by assholes named _Finn_." 

Bellamy snorts at her giggle. He remembers Raven's _Finn_ , alright.

"Imagine that," he offers. 

Small world.

 _Only because she came back_ , his brain supplies needlessly.

"We kept in touch every few months while I was gone. I sent her postcards. At some point I figured out a vague story about why I couldn't get too personal with strangers." 

There's no way the Raven he knows wouldn't have been suspicious, even a little bit. She's certainly good at minding her business, however, so there's that.

"After I came back, she introduced me to Monty. He's been helping me fake paperwork and never once asked me more than I was comfortable with." Clarke utters the last part timidly.

"Sounds like Monty. What kind of paperwork? If you don't..."

Clarke sets her cup down, bracing her hands on her knees when he follows suit. She moves on the couch, towards him, still keeping a decent amount of distance.

"Like a birth certificate. Clarke Griffin, 23. Nice to meet you." She sticks her hand out with a cheeky grin. Affection pours off him as he shakes it and keeps it in his for a minute longer than necessary. 

Impossibly, it feels like he sees her for the first time and like she's been in his life ever since their first real encounter. It feels like she's there, with him, and oceans apart from him at the same time.

A painful pinch in him brings him down to earth.

"Will you stay for long? In Shallow Valley."

"I haven't decided. There were thoughts I couldn't shake and loose ends to tie." Something unsettling must have shown on his face, because she goes on without a pause in between. 

"I know I came to you because I'm selfish, because you could still ground me even from miles away. When I worked as a volunteer amongst the doctors and the teachers, I kept thinking about how much _you_ would have loved it. What _you_ would have done differently. It was almost like my presence there lost half its purpose."

Her eyes flutter shut and open again, more determined. "But I don't want to upset you any more than I already have."

"Right now," Bellamy responds. ",what upsets me is I can't trust that you won't disappear."

"I can't promise that I won't leave," Clarke confides. "I want to see more. _Do_ more, for me and for others."

He believes her. He believes that there is more to it than her accounting for her sins.

"But I can promise to be honest with you."

"You don't owe me anything, Clarke," he argues.

"It's what I want, too." 

There is so much that Bellamy wants, too, and he doesn't have the slightest clue about where to begin. One look at the tremble of her bottom lip, at the way she leans forward, much like him, so as not to lose a single second and —

And Bellamy knows she doesn't have the slightest clue, either.

They can content themselves with the closure they had anticipated up till now or they can be clueless together.

Clarke shivers. "I think the tea has gone cold."

Bellamy's soul hums. "We can make more." 

And that they do.

They stay up until the sun chases away the shadows and the neighbour's dog barks excitedly for his morning walk. 

They talk, they learn, and they keep learning.

They read one another like forgotten old books who have all but lost their intoxicating scent, with fragile spines and thousands of pages, with their ups, their downs and their twists.

Clarke stops running, but she makes endless plans, big and small, and she shares them like she's reinventing the way life is supposed to be lived, all over again.

Small steps is what it takes for closeness and intimacy, for being better and being human.

Bellamy, over time, debunks the idea of her. Encountering the green of a different forest, the flavor sweeter than cherries and haunted fierceness and oil paint, is something he once feared. He feared nothing else would compare.

But, like before, he couldn't be more wrong.

The heart is understanding and forgiving and it expands with every new addition. It makes room for all the different ways he learns to love her.

In a different universe, he might have smelled the forest in Clarke's hair in his sleep, where she would have bled into darkness, lost in infinity, untouchable.

In this one, they don't go back to the cabin in the woods, and they still have a whole lot to resolve. To unveil who they've become.

Every time he breathes her in, it's different, thrilling. And every time he tastes hope and adventure on her skin, it feels like two bodies have finally caught up with souls long aligned.

It feels very much like the start of a different kind of infinity.

::

fin.

::


End file.
